Chorus of Witches, Paul Buckland, pub. W.H. Allen 1959 first edition. Octavo. 224 pp. Red cloth. The jacket is unclipped with virtually no edge wear. The rear panel has some minor grubbiness. A fresh copy of this exceptionally scarce title. The story of a troupe of theatrical drag queens,around whom are woven the complex relationships of characters coming to terms with their sexuality. Jock, a hard-bitten Glaswegian is a knife-thrower in the itinerant variety show hopelessly in love with a young drag artist, Colin. Also attracted to Colin is an ex-soldier, Alan, who first met Colin years before and is excited to meet him again in a chance encounter in an Edinburgh pub. Much of the action takes place in the Scottish capital where the variety show is playing for a spell. The theatrical background, the camp bitchiness of the drag artists is well-observed but largely chaste. The emphasis is very much on love rather than sex. The treatment of homosexuality in English fiction seems to have taken longer to directly address the issue of physical sex, perhaps unsurprisingly given the illegality of the act. Unusually for the period, however, the novel reaches a happy conclusion suggesting that homosexual relationships need not always end in tragedy, as they so often do in post-war British fiction on the theme. I can discover nothing about the author