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. She guides us through her career and her life, and what leaps off the page is her strength, her compassion and her unswerving loyalty to people who were sometimes afraid to live their real lives. It is hard to put yourself in the position of Jill or her many friends at the time, but it was life - ups and downs.

It probably also helps if you're really passionate about theatre, because there's a big emphasis on the London theatre scene in the 80s. Jill also informs us about the many advances that have been made since the epidemic which was very useful to know. 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 highly recommend this book - it's beautifully written, brings people who should be alive and performing today back to life in a lovely way, and educates the reader brilliantly about a scary time in the world. I also think this is a very ‘positive’ take, with a lot of the more negative aspects like reactions from family etc barely described or not explored in any depth.

On a lighter note, I think anyone who likes theatre or anything West End/Broadway would really enjoy this as that is the industry Jill and her friends all work in and there's mentions of loads of different shows as well as some names that people may recognise. Most of all, she shines a light on those who were stigmatised and shamed, and remembers those brave and beautiful boys who were lost too soon. Warning to anyone with the slightest resistance to writing about friendships formed through singing show tunes; they will wonder quite what the fuss is about with this book, and will wonder quite where the author is coming from. You think that we are in a century where the science and technology is considered to be more advanced then it was 100 years ago, you think they would have come up with a cure for HIV.

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. My favourite part was that Nalder named any of the journalists who wrote unkind articles during the HIV/AIDS crisis.Make sure you do not have a mouthful of drink when you read about the guy who lives opposite the Pink Palace.

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 she could get. Far far too many references to theatres and plays, which lost me as someone who is not familiar with that world. 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. Ultimately this book is one last, and generous, gift to the ‘boys’ she cared for in those dark years.

For them 'coming out' was partly about saying that the baggage sex came with in somebody else's past.

In this heartbreaking, inspiring and deeply-felt book, actor, activist and AIDS awareness campaigner Jill Nalder – inspiration for one of the central characters in TV drama It’s A Sin – delivers an incredibly moving and personal account of life and friendship in 1980s London at the onset of the AIDS crisis. Like a book I read previously and reviewed here, by a different author, I came to this book via BBC radio.This story is a mix of things - creativity, and artistic dreams as well as friendship and family (both born and found), strength, grief, and most of all love. For fans of channel four’s ‘It’s a sin’ this is a must read…the book is very different to the show and is heartbreaking, funny, enlightening and shocking. Growing up through the 80’s I witnessed the war years and this book takes me right back to the time and london. S. when the disease was new, had no cure, and invoked an utterly freezing lack of empathy from society, along with the lack of information about the disease. Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).