A lot of this is autobiographical for writer Patrick Gale. Like one of the characters in the film, his own mother did discover a pile of love letters in her husband's desk that were written to him by a male friend. She destroyed them, partly out of fear that the discovery of them would incriminate him in the eyes of the law and also out of disgust and ignorance, equating homosexuality with pedophilia.
The flagship drama in the BBC's 2017 Gay Britannia season, a series of programmes commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act. Up until 1967, homosexuality in the United Kingdom was a criminal offence. The removal of the Act meant that gay men could consort together without the fear of being sent to prison.
Written over a period of six years.
Bristol is a city in the United Kingdom, but it also British Slang for female breasts.