At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament

Jarman, Derek

ISBN 10: 009177067X / ISBN 13: 9780091770679

Published by Hutchinson, London, 1992,, 1992

About this Item

1st edition, hardback, 8vo, 138pp, illustrated, top edges brown-spotted, otherwise clean and tight, no inscriptions, Very Good / Very Good dustwrapper; not price-clipped. ISBN: 009177067X.

Seller Inventory # 470288

Bibliographic Details

• Title: At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament
• Publisher: Hutchinson, London, 1992,
• Publication Date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 009177067X
• ISBN 13: 9780091770679
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • biography

About this title

Synopsis

One of the most controversial filmmakers of our time (Caravaggio, The Last of England, Edward II), and outspoken crusader for gay civil rights in Britain, Derek Jarman was diagnosed HIV positive in December of 1986. At Your Own risk is Derek's distillation of his philosophy of life and an impassioned and witty guide to gay sexuality from the repressed 40s through the libidinous 60s to the Aids-chilled present. Derek confronts his death, describing the reality of being HIV positive. Of a walk home after a sexual encounter on Hampstead Heath, he writes: "Why are you doing this, Derek? You shouldn't be standing under these cold stars. You shouldn't have the stamina to do this.' The answer is that I didn't have the stamina, but throwing my arms around a stranger is an act of defiance that keeps me alive." At Your Own Risk is an act of defiance - a defiant statement against a society that vacillates between indifference and moral censure on the issue of Aids and a defiant celebration of gay sexuality. At Your Own Risk argues that if you are HIV positive you can only remain frightened for so long and that there comes a point at which fear gives way to acceptance - a point after which you have to start living again.

About the Author

Terry eagleton is Britain's most influential radical literary critic. He has been a fellow of four Oxford and Cambridge colleges, and is presently Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at Oxford