Description

Book Synopsis

Based on the award-winning memoir by Timothy Conigrave, and adapted for the stage by acclaimed playwright Tommy Murphy, Holding the Man tells a remarkable true-life love story that speaks across generations, sexualities and cultures.

The course of teenage love rarely runs smooth, but it is a white-water adventure if you are secretly gay in an all-male school in 1970s Melbourne with a crush on the captain of the football team.

Against the odds, Tim and John develop a relationship that, for fifteen years, survives everything life throws at it – the separations, the discriminations, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses – until the only problem that love can't solve turns up to part them.

Tommy Murphy's play Holding the Man was first performed in Sydney, Australia, in 2006. It had its UK premiere at the Trafalgar Studios in the West End in 2010.

‘Tommy Murphy is a bewitching playwright of startling originality’ - Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton, Artistic Directors of Sydney Theatre Company



Trade Review

'Fresh, frank and funny... a wrenchingly moving love story I defy anyone with a pulse not to relate to'

* Evening Standard *

'Compelling, wrenching… unflinching, devastating, moving and funny’

* Sydney Morning Herald *

Holding the Man

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    £10.99

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    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Wed 1 Jul 2026.

    A Paperback / softback by Tommy Murphy, Timothy Conigrave

    1 in stock

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      Publisher: Nick Hern Books
      Publication Date: 22/04/2010
      ISBN13: 9781848421080, 978-1848421080
      ISBN10: 1848421087
      Also in:
      Poetry

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      Based on the award-winning memoir by Timothy Conigrave, and adapted for the stage by acclaimed playwright Tommy Murphy, Holding the Man tells a remarkable true-life love story that speaks across generations, sexualities and cultures.

      The course of teenage love rarely runs smooth, but it is a white-water adventure if you are secretly gay in an all-male school in 1970s Melbourne with a crush on the captain of the football team.

      Against the odds, Tim and John develop a relationship that, for fifteen years, survives everything life throws at it – the separations, the discriminations, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses – until the only problem that love can't solve turns up to part them.

      Tommy Murphy's play Holding the Man was first performed in Sydney, Australia, in 2006. It had its UK premiere at the Trafalgar Studios in the West End in 2010.

      ‘Tommy Murphy is a bewitching playwright of startling originality’ - Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton, Artistic Directors of Sydney Theatre Company



      Trade Review

      'Fresh, frank and funny... a wrenchingly moving love story I defy anyone with a pulse not to relate to'

      * Evening Standard *

      'Compelling, wrenching… unflinching, devastating, moving and funny’

      * Sydney Morning Herald *

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