Playland

An important, shocking and evocative memoir. This is the voice of one man from within a dark scandal that nestled in the heart of London's Soho in the 1970s. Travelling to the big city to escape The Troubles in his native Northern Ireland, Antony Daly accepted a job in Foyles Bookshop and began a new life in England. However, his naivety saw him quickly fall foul of predators, looking for young men to blackmail and sexually exploit. After years of hiding the secret of his abuse at the hands of some of the most influential men in the country, Antony's trauma became harder to contain as he witnessed revelations of historic abuse coming to light on TV and in newspapers. Then, finally his lost voice ripped through the safe family life he had built over 40 years. With parallels to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, this is stylishly written and politically explosive. The haunting true story of a young man's descent into a hell designed to satisfy the powerful. A world which destroyed the lives of everyone involved. `[This is my] journey into a world of drink and drugs, a world of gangsters, rent boys, businessmen, politicians, pimps and paedophiles. Because of what happened to me and the fact that I kept a diary at the time, I am in a unique position to tell the real story of Playland.'