Love from the Pink Palace: Memories of Love, Loss and Cabaret through the AIDS Crisis, for fans of IT'S A SIN

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I had to take a long walk along the seafront after finishing the book, it’s quite the ripping yarn, ripping at the heart, emotionally raw. As we saw in It’s A Sin and can truly appreciate through her memoir, Jill has the ability to inspire through action. In particular, one of Jill’s fallen friends tried everything to survive until they were drugs available to control the HIV virus – they very sadly did not but did inspire others to fight on. Some of those are still with us today. That friend made it to 7 August 1995, painfully close to life-saving triple-drug therapy that would arrive less than 12 months later. It was not just Phantom of the Opera that was robbed of such talent. We all were. Time and again. Jill is a busy person, quite how they managed to do so much is a miracle. She is also modest, and although allowing the wonderful excitement of her life to shine here, often through the lens of others’ lives, she also shares the gratitude of being able to experience such talented people. Every daily activity that Pink Palace offers costs money, about 25 euros minimum. Due to the price and our experience with the booze cruise we didn't participate in any of those. This is Jill Nalder’s first book and it’s a pretty astonishing debut which grips and holds you tight by the hand, urging you not to go, not to put out the light, not to leave a word unread. There’s something about Jill’s straightforward South Welsh narrating of her life which echos the flint and steel in the soul of this Neath girl.

Love from the Pink Palace: Memories of Love, Loss and Cabaret

To those lost to the killer we call AIDS, the world of PrEP, treatment and people on medication who ‘can’t pass it on’ is alien. I cannot help but ask if we are doing enough to honour their legacy and sacrifice? Melbourne is growing and becoming a world-class city, we are adopting new world-class living trends that have been in global metropolises for a long time,” Mr Kennon said. But soon rumours were spreading from America about a frightening illness being dubbed the 'gay flu', and Jill and her friends now found their formerly carefree existence under threat.A heartbreaking, life-affirming memoir of love, loss and cabaret through the AIDS crisis, from IT'S A SIN's Jill Nalder I think I went into this with the wrong expectations, and also I think this is for people who are very into the theatre musical scene. I had no idea who anyone was, and so I didn’t feel much connection to the author or the stories she was telling. I bought this book last year but was a bit nervous about opening the wounds that the devastating ‘It’s a Sin’ caused and I was right to be, it ripped them all open again. The hostels beach area was beautiful though and we spent many hours on the loungers and in the water. Breakfast and dinner, which is included in the price, was delicious. Breakfast was yogurt, bread, ham, cheese and eggs every morning. Dinner varied but was very good every night (big portions). The staff seats you with people you don't know, which is really nice and a good way to get to meet new people. I actually liked how Jill made some references to the Covid-19 pandemic in her book, as really it's one of the closest things we have now in modern memory to compare to the terrifying era that was the AIDS epidemic including the fear and vilifying of a particular group of people. From healthcare to people in the street, it was too long a time before suffering gay men were treated with the respect that they and any human being deserves as their bodies were slowly ravaged by an illness that takes no prisoners. Jill also makes sure to point out in her book as well how AIDs diagnoses also affected many women and how testing procedure failed women and children who may have contracted the disease whether it be through sexual relations, blood transfusions, or in utero.

Love from the Pink Palace: Memories of Love, Loss - WHSmith

By sharing the lives of her ‘boys’ with us and letting us laugh, while we feel the trembling possibilities they all felt were theirs for the taking, Jill does what she promised them. They’ll not be forgotten. But soon rumours were spreading from America about a frightening illness being dubbed the ‘gay flu’, and Jill and her friends now found their formerly carefree existence under threat. Love from the Pink Palace is just that, a huge throb of love, from a woman who continues to give and share (although she doesn’t mention it here, her charities have raised more than a million pounds for HIV research and support). Her love teaches us that unconditional love will get us through the darkest of times and give us an opportunity to build on the ashes of the glories of those who went before.

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It is absolutely awful, it feels like you are on a summer camp in high school. Everything is so structured with so many ridiculous rules and everything is centered around "getting laid". What are we, 16 years old?!

Love and miss this place - Review of The Pink Palace Love and miss this place - Review of The Pink Palace

Jill met the crisis head on . . . She held the hands of so many men. She lost them, and remembered them, and somehow kept going' Russell T Davies is a good friend of Jill and it’s clear from this book how much of her life he actually used as raw material for It’s A Sin and there’s a lot of memories obviously too naughty for the TV but included with relish in this memoir. Our first day there we did the booze cruise which cost 25 euros, this price covered only the boat ride itself, drinks were still about 2 euros on top of that. If we could describe the booze cruise in one word it would be "creepy", from the naked cliff jumping, to the naked body shots and having people basically have oral sex right in front of you, it was a very uncomfortable experience. At one point we stopped at a private beach to play some games which involved getting into sexual positions with your partner, switching swimsuits and eventually getting fully naked. It was very uncomfortable even for the most open minded people. The guys running the boat were very pushy in trying to get all the girls to take their tops off.Her tireless campaigning for Aids awareness and research is the heart of her friend Davies’s It’s A Sin (she has a cameo as the mother of the character inspired by her). In this livestreamed event, Nalder and Davies will be in conversation about both the memoir and the TV show, shining a light on the boys who were stigmatised and shamed, and remembering those who were lost too soon. Absolutely five stars. This book is desperately sad at points, but so vitally important. The shrouding of queer history by the British government, particulary of the AIDS crisis during the reign of Section 28 means that many of the younger LGBTQIA+ generation are left with very little knowledge of what happened from 1986-2003.

PINK PALACE - Updated 2023 Reviews (Agios Gordios, Greece) THE PINK PALACE - Updated 2023 Reviews (Agios Gordios, Greece)

Takes approximately 1-3 working days to arrive, (but can take longer during busy periods like bank holidays or Pride Month) A heartbreaking, life-affirming memoir of love, loss and cabaret through the AIDS crisis, from IT’S A SIN’s Jill NalderI think I'd just rather read an AIDS memoir from the perspective of a queer writer rather than a straight ally, no matter how closely involved with the community. When Jill Nalder arrived at drama school in London in the early 1980s, she was ready for her life to begin. With her band of best friends – of which many were young, talented gay men with big dreams of their own – she grabbed London by the horns: partying with drag queens at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, hosting cabarets at her glamorous flat, flitting across town to any jobs could get. The work and time that went into raising the money and awareness around hiv and aids while wrapped in the middle of nursing and losing your friends and continuing to work in a highly demanding run of cabaret and theatre tours is awe inspiring and will never be forgotten. The book is part career CV where names of different shows and different songs in them are dropped as if we should know them all. But what starts a a CV becomes the main part of the book when the show 'Les Miserable' becomes almost a character in itself, the yin to the yang of the A.I.D.S crisis. The author is pulled into deeper and deeper as different friends live by trail and error with different medications and and illnesses that young men are not expected to catch becoming part of a new caseload in hospitals for doctors to treat. As the author notes, a new caseload for doctors requires the renewing of their bedside manner, and adaptation in other ways too. There is also humour in the tragedy as different selves are revealed in the deaths of certain gay men than they revealed in their lives.