This Island's Mine [Paperback]

1988. THATCHER'S BRITAIN.

Seventeen-year-old Luke runs away to London  away from homophobic playground slurs, headlines that scream 'Don't Teach Our Children To Be Gay' and a family who wouldn't understand him  to Uncle Martin, who he once saw with his arms around another man at a march. In the capital, Mark is sacked because of fears about colleagues working with 'someone like him'. His boyfriend, Selwyn, faces being beaten up both by the police and at home by his own stepbrother. Meanwhile, Debbie battles with her son, who doesn't want to live with her and her girlfriend. And retired piano teacher Miss Rosenblum  who once found refuge in this country from a terror that swept away half her family in 1930s Vienna  has seen this sort of hatred and fear before.

Soon, these individual stories  of first loves and old flames, alliances and abandonment, missed opportunities and new chances  intertwine to paint a vivid picture of Eighties Britain.

This Island's Mine was originally performed by Gay Sweatshop in 1988. Now, three decades after the introduction of Section 28 banning positive representations of homosexuality, Philip Osment's passionate and lyrical play, of outsiders, exiles and refugees, is all too resonant.

Philip Osment read Modern Languages at Keble College, Oxford and trained as an actor at Webber Douglas. He acted with leading alternative theatre companies including The Half Moon, Shared Experience and Gay Sweatshop (who performed his first scripts) and then went on to work as a director and writer.

He has also written and directed plays for young people for Theatre Centre and Red Ladder.

His trilogy of Devon plays (THE DEARLY BELOVED, WHAT I DID IN THE HOLIDAYS and FLESH AND BLOOD) was commissioned by Mike Alfreds and produced by Cambridge Theatre Company (aka Method and Madness). These were all nominated for Writers Guild awards and THE DEARLY BELOVED won the award for best regional play in 1993. In 19l“$