As someone who has been involved with LGBT History Month in the UK since its inception in 2004, I need no convincing of the importance of visibility and of reclaiming our history. What we now call LGBT people have been erased from history books or disguised as something they were not for centuries. This needs not only to stop but to be reversed.

Therefore, a book purporting to do just that, by 'outing' 'closeted' British male politicians of the 20th century, should naturally get my vote, yet it is not easy to decide which Division Lobby to enter, and abstention may be required.

In this rapid and readable romp through the last century, Bloch uses a set format to present his material: a potted biography introduces each figure, who is generally paired and compared with another as part of a discrete chapter, of which there are 17. Matthew Parris, an openly gay columnist at The Times, and a former Conservative MP himself, provides his reassuring imprimatur to the book, discussing the potential pitfalls faced by such a work that its author has, he tells us, managed to sidestep.

Despite Bloch's attempts, however, the book becomes somewhat repetitive and monotonous about halfway through. The portraits of its subjects, who seemingly come from the same rarified social strata (they often seem somehow related to each other), and led uncannily similar lives (how many of them were elected MP at 26?!), tend to lose focus and sharpness.

The book is nonetheless quite informative, particularly for averred 'cases'. There are however a surprisingly large number of people in this gallery about whom the author seems to have little more than a feeling to go by (On page 89, he says of Brendan Bracken, whom he has just labelled "a brilliant concealer": "Had he wished to lead a secret life as a practising homosexual, he would have known how to go about it.").

While the book is not gossipy as such (one of the potential pitfalls), in that it is not sensationalist, the word "rumours" recurs rather too often, and the whole thing often feels a little too speculative for my liking. Bloch is also generally very vague as to the sources of his information, which, while it may make the text more readable, when coupled with a number of small but easily avoidable inaccuracies, raises unfortunate questions about the rigour and value of the whole enterprise.

Of course, in this context, rumours can prove a useful smoke to indicate the presence of a fire. But in times where being the object of such rumours could signify political and personal ruin, it is not difficult to imagine that opponents of those men could find an interest in creating, or at least helping along, baseless stories. The Labouchère Amendment of 1885, that created the offence of "gross indecency", wasn't nicknamed the Blackmailer's Charter for nothing and being a 'closet queen,' as per the pithy but rather uncaring title of the book, was by no means a luxury.

While some historians famously will bend over backwards to dismiss any whiff of homosex or even romantic interest of the 'unspeakable' kind ("they were just very good friends"), Bloch tends to bend over forward to reveal the slightest queer opening in the lives of his chosen subjects.

Incidentally it is never quite clear how he selected those subjects in the first place. There are passing mentions of other men throughout the book who seem just as worthy of being included as those who were but were left in dusty obscurity.

On page 119, Bloch describes two of his subjects (Samuel Hoare and Philip Sassoon) as "indubitably homosexual in outlook" (whatever that means), before acknowledging that "it seems unlikely that they ever gave much physical expression to that side of their nature."

What reveals a touch of the lavender brush in Bloch's eyes, and 'proves' homosexual inclinations, if not activities, is very often nothing more than a circumstantial list of ridiculous and offensive stereotypes, that wouldn't have been out of place in the worst tabloids of the times.

To quote but a few examples (grab the smelling salts and clutch your pearls now!):
- Rosebery was "petulant, coquettish, and intensely narcissistic." He holidayed "in Naples, the homosexual Mecca of the time." The fact of his close friendships with "several men who were clearly homosexual" and those always present "rumours", "leaves little doubt that he possessed homosexual tendencies" (p28).
- Churchill was "intensely narcissistic and exhibitionistic; he had an emotional personality, being easily moved to tears; he was a sybarite, with a passion for silk underwear" (p79).
- Bracken, who was pushy and prudish, never married and went the parties organised by someone's "louche bisexual brother-in-law" (p88).
- Curzon, who was "a great admirer of women," and a philandered, married twice and had three children, "was also a man with many feminine characteristics. He took not interest in sport [...] but loved old buildings and interior decoration. He was childishly vain and narcissistic, and adored dressing up and participating in lavish ceremonies. His touchiness and petulance had an epicene quality" (p99).
- When it comes to Channon, "taken in combination, there is something inescapably homosexual about his love of lords, his passion for lavish décor, his fascination with the Nazis, his malicious wit" (p153).
- As for Eden,"a handsome man, he was extremely vain and narcissistic, and was (like Balfour) thought to possess feminine characteristics" (p212).

In Bloch's mind, narcissism is clearly at the heart of the homosexual psyche, and so is misogyny which is very often quoted as another significant trait. Add to this a dash of pub psychology (those men are either too attached or not attached to one parent or the other), and we are looking at the recipe for a rather nauseating cocktail. Oddly, after imbibing such potent draught, the reader is left with the after-taste that none of those people are particularly nice characters.

Although Bloch seems broadly non-judgemental of the men he introduces to the reader in his book, and he did take the trouble to research and write the darn thing, his possibly unconscious, though unmissably ambiguous, attitude to homosexuality proves problematic and is certainly open to inquiry and challenge. I can't help the feeling that the author dresses right of the political spectrum, which could explain his apparent and puzzling contradictions.

Although Maureen Colquhoun, who, in 1977, was the first female MP to come out, is mentioned in the epilogue, Closet Queens only concerns itself with men; middle or upper-class (mostly), white men. This is, we are told, because female homosexuality was never criminalised in the UK, and because there were so few women involved in politics for most of the period covered.

The book was published in 2015, at a time when interest in LGBT history had reached critical mass, but before the woke years when the need to consider women and people of colour had not been as recognised as it is now. In that respect the book is an artefact of that small window in time and has not aged too well. Even if its final form is not quite what it could have been, it is however something that was needed, and possibly still is, if only as a primer for more rigorous and thorough explorations of the subject.