My friend Jill Longmate, who has died of cancer aged 63, was a writer, poet and historian, and the author of the celebrated, finely researched book From the Closet to the Screen: Women at the Gateways Club 1945-85.
For decades the Gateways, a dingy basement off Kings Road, Chelsea, was the only place in London where lesbians could meet and be themselves. Dusty Springfield, Patricia Highsmith, Maggi Hambling and Sandi Toksvig all went there, as did I. The club was the setting for Maureen Duffy’s 1966 novel The Microcosm and was depicted in the 1968 Hollywood movie The Killing of Sister George.
