Book review of the monograph Radical Acts HIV/AIDS Activism in Late Twentieth-Century England, authored by George Severs

Citation

Papadogiannis N (2025) Book review of the monograph Radical Acts HIV/AIDS Activism in Late Twentieth-Century England, authored by George Severs. English Historical Review, 140 (606), pp. 1189-1191. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceaf239

Abstract
First paragraph: This monograph is a very welcome development in the study of HIV and AIDS in England. George Severs’s book is situated in the ‘second wave’ in the history of the subject-matter. The ‘first wave’, exemplified by the work of Virginia Berridge, took a policy-centred approach. By contrast, the ‘second wave’, as manifest in works such as those of Matt Cook and Hannah Elizabeth and Janet Weston, emphasises the lived experience of people with HIV and/or HIV and AIDS activists. The originality in Severs’s analysis lies especially in his capacious understanding of the notion of activism. The book is also commendable for the careful transnational and comparative history approach which underpins particularly its second chapter.