As a young adult, Paul Burston was burying one friend after another practically each week. When he wasn’t, he was busy making preparations for his own death - which he felt was imminent.
Born in York and raised in South Wales, Paul had moved to London in 1984 at the age of 18 to study at St Mary’s College. He was able to begin embracing his sexuality with his friends and explore more of the queer night scene for a short period of time before the rumours started to circulate about the new ‘gay plague’ spreading across the world.
By the end of that year, there had been 108 AIDS cases and 46 deaths in the UK alone. Panic grew, with scandalous headlines in tabloid newspapers at the time, like ‘I’d shoot my son if he has AIDS’.
