Love from the Pink Palace: Memories of Love, Loss and C… (2024)

Brilliant!

If you were moved by the TV show 'It’s a sin' then be prepared for more tears.

A beautiful memoir about an extraordinary woman who loved during a time of great fear and grief as the men she called her friends and family were struck down by a terrifying illness that had no cure. Author Jill Nalder is the inspiration behind the character of Jill in It's A Sin (a brilliant show if you haven't seen it), and that's how I found out about this book and knew I needed to read it.

This story is a mix of things - creativity, and artistic dreams as well as friendship and family (both born and found), strength, grief, and most of all love. The love that shines through on every page of this book as Jill describes her life growing up in London, working in the theatre and West End, with a bunch of beautiful boys who made her laugh and whom she cared about deeply, is immense.

I actually liked how Jill made some references to the Covid-19 pandemic in her book, as really it's one of the closest things we have now in modern memory to compare to the terrifying era that was the AIDS epidemic including the fear and vilifying of a particular group of people. From healthcare to people in the street, it was too long a time before suffering gay men were treated with the respect that they and any human being deserves as their bodies were slowly ravaged by an illness that takes no prisoners. Jill also makes sure to point out in her book as well how AIDs diagnoses also affected many women and how testing procedure failed women and children who may have contracted the disease whether it be through sexual relations, blood transfusions, or in utero.

This book will make you cry and as Jill took the time to educate the reader about the wonderful people who were Colin, Derek, Juan and Dursley - and the many, many others who lost their lives, I knew if I allowed it, I would just become a bawling mess. This book is an absolute eye opener about a time that people are still affected and traumatised by, and while we know now that a HIV diagnosis isn't the death sentence it once was, we still have a long way to go before we overcome the stigma and fear that still rings around such a diagnosis.

On a lighter note, I think anyone who likes theatre or anything West End/Broadway would really enjoy this as that is the industry Jill and her friends all work in and there's mentions of loads of different shows as well as some names that people may recognise. Juan and Jill performed in the earlier versions of Les Mis in Paris and London, and Cameron Mackintosh himself called Dursley when he was in hospital, and Dame Judi Dench spoke at his service!

I highly recommend this book - it's beautifully written, brings people who should be alive and performing today back to life in a lovely way, and educates the reader brilliantly about a scary time in the world.

After leaving drama school Jill Nalder worked in numerous venues to gain an Equity Card & forge a career on the London theatre scene. Here she tells the true story of the highs & lows of life in 1980's London as the AIDS crisis emerged.
It's an emotional read & Jill's experiences inspired Russell T Davies to create the superb TV series It's A Sin. A highly recommeneded read full of injustice, ignorance & tradgedy....but above all love.

Too good. Incredible. Fantastic. Cried all the way through but also fell in love with Jill and all her lovely friends. Happy sad.

Heartbreaking and heartwarming. Just a really excellent book that was full of life while also talking about the loss of life in a very personal way.
My favourite part was that Nalder named any of the journalists who wrote unkind articles during the HIV/AIDS crisis.

What an amazing woman Jill Nalder is. Inspired by the C4 series ‘It’s a Sin’ and hearing Jill and Russell T Davies talk at a Q&A, I knew I had to read Jill’s book. Read it and hear Jill talk.

5 Stars!

I AM UGLY CRYING.

At the start of the year, I asked 12 friends to recommend me 12 books, and my sister in law recommended this for me. To prepare myself I watched It's A Sin two weeks ago, and I cannot tell you how much I loved the series but I felt so so so sad whilst watching it.

I knew going in that this would make me cry and I was a mess at seeing this time period for the Aids Crisis and I cannot even begin to imagine what it was like. It just felt so raw and you really got a sense for just how scary it was at the time to see loved ones go through something like this. I honestly felt so attached to Jill and she comes across as such a wonderful person and seeing how much love her and her friends radiated and the bravery from all of them. I genuinely feel like this is a book that will stay with me for the longest time, it was honestly so heartbreaking, filled with so much love.

A fascinating look at the inspiration behind the TV series 'It's a Sin'. Jill is and was a true inspirational hero and support for a lot of gay men who suffered through the very worst of the AIDs pandemic. I didn't quite feel the full emotional impact I thought I might, which is the only reason that it's not 5*

Just beautiful: life-affirming, devastating and so very important, this is an inspirational read. If you watched It’s A Sin, please read this book!

La! 💖

so beautiful and provides the most necessary insight into our queer history in the uk.

loved learning all about derek juan and dursley and felt my heart break alongside them

I will never be the same after this

Amazing but wouldn’t recommend reading in public (desperately trying not to bawl my eyes out on the train)

It fits that the first word in the title of this book is Love. This book exudes love, it pours from the page. Yes, there is tradegy, confusion, prejudice and fear found in this book, but it is love that you are left with. I found myself hugging this book when I went to put it down, just to keep all the friends, family, fun and love, safe within it 💗 A beautiful book

A really well told memoir of the AIDS crisis and its effect on the West End community.

So so beautiful. A million stars out of 5.

hello new reading slump. I will be crying over these boys for the rest of the year.

I think I went into this with the wrong expectations, and also I think this is for people who are very into the theatre musical scene. I had no idea who anyone was, and so I didn’t feel much connection to the author or the stories she was telling.
Considering this was good for someone who had no context (me), I think that it would be a hit for anyone who is familiar with the author and her scene, and I would recommend the Audible read by Jill with her lovely Welsh accent.

A heartbreaking yet funny read. Read at risk of profuse sobbing.

Did not anticipate the joy that radiates from Jill's story. I completely fell in love with her and her friends. Absolutely heartbreaking and a must-read. (Read as an audiobook)

Loved every page. Made me laugh & cry. What an inspiring woman and what a crazy time of history that feels so distant to those who didn’t love through it… la

This sat on my tbr pile for far too long. Partly because I just wasn’t ready to go there emotionally again. Sure enough I was sobbing from the foreword. It’s Jill, real Jill with all her courage, strength, dignity, honesty, tenacity and love taking us from the pink palace and way beyond in her words with her boys. If you loved it’s a sin, this is perfect to follow up with.
The work and time that went into raising the money and awareness around hiv and aids while wrapped in the middle of nursing and losing your friends and continuing to work in a highly demanding run of cabaret and theatre tours is awe inspiring and will never be forgotten.
Jill, you and all the other Jill’s around the world are hero’s . The love you poured into your beautiful boys is one like no other. Thank you. La!

A traumatising subject that I’m normally deeply moved and passionate about. However, this book was disappointing. It read just as a list of famous people that the author knew and with too many people included it was difficult to attach to any of them. Far far too many references to theatres and plays, which lost me as someone who is not familiar with that world. Such a shame as such a devastating time and subject

So what was it like to be gay and live in 1980s and 1990s London? This book will tell you everything you need to know, and more. Like a book I read previously and reviewed here, by a different author, I came to this book via BBC radio. With this book, the radio programme records the author joining her old friend, and the writer of the foreword of this book, Russell T Davies https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0dn... It is a tonic to listen to.

Warning to anyone with the slightest resistance to writing about friendships formed through singing show tunes; they will wonder quite what the fuss is about with this book, and will wonder quite where the author is coming from. The author is a talented heterosexual woman whose talent for writing songs, singing and performing for the public put her in contact with a society of selectively extrovert gay men and drag artists who wanted nothing more in life than to be on the stage, men who wanted to live their whole lives to be part of a distinctly extrovert, well performed, stagecraft. For myself I understand the attractions around male hom*osexuality, and drag to an extent, but I admit am deaf to the appeal of show tunes become addictive. I am well aware of the idea of 'list songs', songs made of lists. The frequent mention of so many show tunes and musicals through out the book could have been the lyrics of a list song to me.

What this book is about, if it is about any one thing in particular, is recognising what life was like for the first generation of men in London, and other world capitals, who both 'came out' when young-close to the age that their heterosexual equivalents had their first relationships-and contracted A.I.D.S. when the disease was new, had no cure, and invoked an utterly freezing lack of empathy from society, along with the lack of information about the disease.

The author talks a little about the process of the 'coming out' part, but she keeps to herself the most private revelations the young men reveal to her as she plays 'mother hen'/parental substitute to them in different settings. As 'mother hen' she relays very well the disappointment of the young gay men who don't know how to respond to their parents' disappointment in their children's new found honesty with their feelings. What she does not say, which I will, is that as the young men 'come out' they also learn how many feelings and personal choices their parents were taught to suppress in their youth, feelings and actions which the parents expect the young men to suppress in their turn. But the inability to suppress same sex desire is more complex than either parent or young man can understand, but the young men at least try to understand-and create a model that other young men in less open circ*mstances may try to adapt.

But the tragedy for the young men was how short a time they had to understand this, when first one in a circle of friends, then another, feels mildly ill and then fearfully submits to an antibodies test for HIV, and in the earliest days, before the condition gets called A.I.D.s, they almost literally go home to die. That why the fear was so genuine and so prohibitive when a young man a genuine positive HIV result from a test. There are also possibilities of false negative results and and false positive results with the tests to worry about. A genuinely positive test for HIV meant that their bucket list of things they want to do whilst alive had better be short and they had better be strong whist they could be to complete it.

From 1985 onward Jill Nalder talked in her phrase 'liked a cracked record' to describe the frequency of her advice to the young gay men who were her friends about the necessity of safer sex practices, as they were commonly understood. The confidence the young gay men hid a weakness where they believed they were good listeners, because they were clever and they were good learners. But from the tone of the book it seems to me that they were better talkers and better at living in the moment than they were closely observant listeners for each other. It may also be true that gay men were half-aware that sex is something that had always resisted literal and absolutely honest two sided conversations. They could recognise throughout human history sex had been the cause for so much rumour, denial, anger, shame, and secrecy etc, treachery even. But they could not process how they also part of that because most of all what they wanted was joy. For them 'coming out' was partly about saying that the baggage sex came with in somebody else's past. That baggage of guilt etc was 'not their business and not their inheritance'.

The book is part career CV where names of different shows and different songs in them are dropped as if we should know them all. But what starts a a CV becomes the main part of the book when the show 'Les Miserable' becomes almost a character in itself, the yin to the yang of the A.I.D.S crisis. The author is pulled into deeper and deeper as different friends live by trail and error with different medications and and illnesses that young men are not expected to catch becoming part of a new caseload in hospitals for doctors to treat. As the author notes, a new caseload for doctors requires the renewing of their bedside manner, and adaptation in other ways too. There is also humour in the tragedy as different selves are revealed in the deaths of certain gay men than they revealed in their lives.

The book could have been subtitled 'living with A.I.D.s as explored through three close friends', as the lives of three close friends of Jill Nalder are shared in the book, along with a few more distant friendships, mark the progress that doctors and hospitals make in managing the medication and emotional support of young men with A.I.D.s. for as long as the doctors can keep the young men alive.

I cannot help but salute the humane and non-judgemental centre of this book, where perhaps to be that close, and to be that observant of the new gay community in action required the observer to be heterosexual and female.

My lovely lovely friend was the editor of this book and introduced it to me. Such a gorgeous read about living in the present and making the most of those around you who are meaningful.

*written wine drunk and emotional on a train*

This is one of those situations where I can 100% admit that this is a beautiful, valuable and exceptionally honest book about the people who were affected by the AIDS crisis in so many different ways. Still, the way that the narrative was presented just did not work for me personally.

I am not the type of person who knows a lot about music, dance and theatre (not now, and especially not from the 80s and 90s), so I was entirely out of my depth for the majority of this memoir. Nevertheless, I got so much value from it - probably not as much as someone more involved in this scene, but a substantial amount nonetheless. In fact, out of all of the books that I have read on this topic, this one was probably the most informative and the most profound, which is very high praise because I have loved those other books too. There were moments where I did find myself chuckling and others where I was tearing up; I felt like I was going on a long painful, but unforgettable journey with all of these lovely beautiful people.

If you think that this sounds like a book for you, please do pick it up. It is a vital read for those who want to understand the pain, stigma and abuse that many were forced to go through at this time, but it also shines a light on all of the incredible heroes of that time, and there were many. While it was not for me, its stellar rating on this site is very well deserved.

This book resonated with me because I was around Jill's age and just starting University at the start of the AIDS crisis and this is such a valuable addition to the history books of that period.
Despite the darkness and despair of parts of the book, Nalder skillfully combines snippets of humour, loads of love and joy and a deep humanity that , despite my tears, kept me reading on.
Although a factual depiction of the Aids pandemic, Love from the Pink Palace is about love and family and pride and loyalty. It is testament to all those Jills (and Jacks) out there who actively contributed to raising money to research and find treatments for the virus. It is an homage to those medical practitioners who so tirelessly worked to give dignity and love throughout the treatments.
The tender anecdotes and conversations, the dignity and love, the human contact and sense of family are poignant and in reading this book had me laughing out loud one minute and in tears the next. Wonderfully and compassionately written.
We should all be more Jill!

For fans of channel four’s ‘It’s a sin’ this is a must read…the book is very different to the show and is heartbreaking, funny, enlightening and shocking.

Strictly speaking this would be 4.5/5 as towards the end of the book it loses pace. I also think this is a very ‘positive’ take, with a lot of the more negative aspects like reactions from family etc barely described or not explored in any depth.

The work Jill did was amazing. If you’re a west end/musicals fan (especially of early to mid nineties shows) there’s lots to geek out on.

I think it’s better than Ruth co*ker Burns ‘all the young men’ but despite the subject matter, I still think the book falls short of being outstanding.

4.5 stars …..

The real story of Jill, the pink Palace and the boys. Incredibly poignant, happy, sad, all emotions reflected in this book. The suffering and the help that others tried to provide laid out in full technicolour, cabaret, theatre, shows, hospitals, etc., a book that needs to be read. It’s absolutely shocking that we are in the 21st century and that there is still no cure for this dreadful disease. You think that we are in a century where the science and technology is considered to be more advanced then it was 100 years ago, you think they would have come up with a cure for HIV.

(Audiobook). An enlightening exploration of real life stories fom the height of the HIV/aids pandemic. At times I got a bit distracted trying to map the stories to the it's a sin production, but ultimately really enjoyed listening to Jill's first hand accounts. The love she had for her friends and the passion for the cause was clear for all to hear. An important period of world history where the human stories often get lost in the headlines from the time.

I don’t usually enjoy autobiographical books, and at first I thought this was the same as others I had read or tried to read, but I persisted and I was rewarded with a beautiful moving and heartbreaking read. Not often can a book make me cry but this book did. The sense of loss jumps out of the pages with excruciating agony and I thank the writer for sharing that with me
Definitely a book I would read again