Tash and Adam hear from Anson Mackay, who left a tiny, remote town in Scotland to embrace a gay identity, and then later another queer identity altogether.

Anson reflects with trusting candour on their experiences through the 80s and 90s, and how people feel compelled to explore their gender even before the right words have arrived.

Buy our book or see our events listings: The Log Books: Voices of Queer Britain and the Helpline that Listened.

Hosted and produced by Tash Walker and Adam Zmith

The voice of the log books: Serena James

Assistant producer: Marnie Woodmeade

Engineer: David Pye

Music: Tom Fosket-Barnes

Original artwork: Natalie Doto

Thanks to the Bishopsgate Institute; our publisher, Faber Books; the dreamboats at Acast; the staff and volunteers at Switchboard, and all the contributors who shared their stories.

Episode transcripts available here.

Call Switchboard on 0800 0119 100, email hello@switchboard.lgbt or instant message via www.switchboard.lgbt.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelogbooks.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adam and Tash are joined in this episode by Diana James, who discovered herself as a dyke in the 80s and joined Switchboard as its first trans volunteer.

Diana discusses what she learnt as she handled phone calls from distressed queer people, and how the older and younger generations need to support each other.

Buy our book or see our events listings: The Log Books: Voices of Queer Britain and the Helpline that Listened.

Hosted and produced by Tash Walker and Adam Zmith

The voice of the log books: Serena James

Assistant producer: Marnie Woodmeade

Engineer: David Pye

Music: Tom Fosket-Barnes

Original artwork: Natalie Doto

Thanks to the Bishopsgate Institute; our publisher, Faber Books; the dreamboats at Acast; the staff and volunteers at Switchboard, and all the contributors who shared their stories.

Episode transcripts available here.

Call Switchboard on 0800 0119 100, email hello@switchboard.lgbt or instant message via www.switchboard.lgbt.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelogbooks.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tash and Adam hear from Ruth Turner, who qualified as a teacher in the 1980s at the height of a destructive public debate over gay and lesbian rights.

Ruth recalls the chilling effect of Section 28, the law that forbade her from supporting queer students, and helps Tash to reckon with their own experience in school.

Buy our book or see our events listings: The Log Books: Voices of Queer Britain and the Helpline that Listened.

Hosted and produced by Tash Walker and Adam Zmith

The voice of the log books: Serena James

Assistant producer: Marnie Woodmeade

Engineer: David Pye

Music: Tom Fosket-Barnes

Original artwork: Natalie Doto

Thanks to the Bishopsgate Institute; our publisher, Faber Books; the dreamboats at Acast; the staff and volunteers at Switchboard, and all the contributors who shared their stories.

Episode transcripts available here.

Call Switchboard on 0800 0119 100, email hello@switchboard.lgbt or instant message via www.switchboard.lgbt.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelogbooks.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adam and Tash’s first guest is John Lindsay, one of the founders of Switchboard, the national LGBTQIA+ helpline.

John takes us back to the first night in the phoneroom in 1974, when a ragtag gang of queers listened out for that first phone call.

Buy our book or see our events listings: The Log Books: Voices of Queer Britain and the Helpline that Listened.

Hosted and produced by Tash Walker and Adam Zmith

The voice of the log books: Serena James

Assistant producer: Marnie Woodmeade

Engineer: David Pye

Music: Tom Fosket-Barnes

Original artwork: Natalie Doto

Thanks to the Bishopsgate Institute; our publisher, Faber Books; the dreamboats at Acast; the staff and volunteers at Switchboard, and all the contributors who shared their stories.

Episode transcripts available here.

Call Switchboard on 0800 0119 100, email hello@switchboard.lgbt or instant message via www.switchboard.lgbt.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelogbooks.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The UK’s best LGBTQ+ history podcast is BACK. After three groundbreaking seasons from 2019-22, featuring the unique archives at Switchboard, winning a string of awards, we’re returning with a new season.

We are Adam Zmith and Tash Walker, hosts and producers, and your guides into queer memories and countless, essential stories.

The all-new season of The Log Books will feature intimate interviews we’ve done as research for our book, which will be published by Faber on January 29th 2026.

We thought: we can’t fit everything into the book, so let’s bring back the podcast!

THE LOG BOOKS season 4 is produced by Aunt Nell in partnership with Faber Books.

New episodes from January 1st. Hit follow or subscribe so you don’t miss them!

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelogbooks.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Quilt: Living memories of queer Britain & Northern Ireland

An audio exhibition open to anyone, anywhere, at any time of day, produced and hosted by Tash Walker and Adam Zmith.

Born from a collaboration between the producers of the award-winning podcast The Log Books and the UK’s first and only LGBTQ+ museum Queer Britain, challenges who and what makes queer history.

The series takes the listener on a journey across the UK, collecting queer memories, from queer people. The Quilt weaves together all these stories and histories, into a beautiful documentary patchwork series.

The Quilt is an audio archive for the future.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelogbooks.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We'd love to introduce you to this new podcast we've been working Queer Roots and Routes!

Queer Roots and Routes is made by a collective.

We are queer. We are migrants or descended from migrants. And we want to tell our stories. Stories of where we’ve come from and how we move in the world today.

We don’t have a boss or a Beyoncé. So each episode of this six-part first series of Queer Roots and Routes has a different host and a different set of voices from our group. Our promise to you is that our podcast is GORGEOUS, FIERCE, SUPERGAY and... REVOLUTIONARY!

We all met through the MAUREEN project by The Love Tank, a not-for-profit community interest company that promotes health and wellbeing of under-served communities through education, capacity building and research.

An Aunt Nell Production

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelogbooks.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We'd love to introduce you to this new podcast Black and Gay, Back in the Day which brings to life a photo archive of Black LGBTQIA+ life in Britain, from the 1970s through to the early 2000s.

Each episode is an intergenerational journey focusing on a key photograph from the archive - joining stories of the past, with those of today. Marc Thompson is the gentle, inquisitive and warm guide to the archive, helping a rotation of younger Black LGBTQIA+ co-hosts navigate these often untold stories. Each episode covers a different theme drawn out of a single photograph from the collection, submerging you into Black LGBTQIA+ history.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelogbooks.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.