John Roman Baker

Published works include:

• Cast Down, Outposts Publications, London, 1968
• Gethsemane, Outposts Publications, London, 1969
• The Dark Antagonist, Unicorn Bookshop, Brighton, 1973.^[20] An unusual, mystical novel of a sexually repressed young man who encounters angelic forces.
• Poèmes à Tristan, G. Oberlé, Paris, 1974.^[21]
• No Fixed Ground, Wilkinson House, London, 2011.^[22] Part of The Drift of Time literary series. A vivid, hallucinatory novel that explores a young man's experience of friendship, sex and obsession amid the sexual liberation of mid-1970s England.
• The Sea and the City, Wilkinson House, London, 2012.^[23] Rich in symbolic imagery THE SEA AND THE CITY follows a young man's quest for salvation in a parallel reality.
• The Paris Syndrome, Wilkinson House, London, 2012.^[24] Part of The Drift of Time literary series. A dark exploration of illicit desire, madness and paternal responsibility.
• The Vicious Age, Wilkinson House, London, 2014.^[25] Part of The Drift of Time literary series. Set in Amsterdam, The Vicious Age explores the painful realities of life in a city that has become more materialistic and vicious in its constant need to renew itself.
• Brighton Darkness, Wilkinson House, London, 2015.^[26] Brighton Darkness is a collection of 17 stories that mostly relate to the city of Brighton & Hove. The stories span the decades from the 1950s to the present day and explore the many contradictions and quirks that define the city's unique character. Gay life in the city runs as a theme through many of the stories, while the author's experiences of other cities, Amsterdam, Paris and New York add a global context to the book. Another recurrent theme is that of return.
• Nick & Greg, Wilkinson House, London, 2016.^[27] Part One of the Nick & Greg Books, introducing the characters Nick and Greg: two gay teens growing up in 1950s Brighton.
• Time of Obsessions, Wilkinson House, London, 2017. Part Two of the Nick & Greg Books focuses on Greg's life after he leaves home and attempts to find his place first in Brighton and then in London. Set in the early sixties and featuring the iconic Chelsea lesbian and gay clubs Le Gigolo and Gateways Club.
• Nick's House, Wilkinson House, London, 2018. Part Three of the Nick & Greg Books. Nick and Greg, reunited in Brighton in the late 1960s defy convention and live by their own subversive sexual rules.
• Greg in Paris, Wilkinson House, London, 2019. Part Four of the Nick & Greg Books. Paris 1969. Greg and Bart go to Paris in search of Karel, and Greg is led into unexplored physical, emotional and philosophical territory.
• Le Far West, Wilkinson House, London, 2019. A fictional study of one man's experiences in a Paris gay porn cinema in 1988.
• 2020, Wilkinson House, London, 2020. Part of The Drift of Time literary series. Alex and Paul meet at the beginning of a crisis that will engulf the world, and they choose to defy the darkness ahead.
• Love & Cowardice, Wilkinson House, London, 2021. Part Five of the Nick & Greg Books. Brighton 1973. Nick meets Nathan, a young supporter of the Gay Liberation Front. There is news from Bart, Karel & Greg and an encounter with Bill Butler at Brighton's Unicorn Bookshop.
• Nick's Fugue, Wilkinson House, London, 2023. Part Six of the Nick & Greg Books. It's the early 1980s, and the gay community itself is facing a brutal challenge. Nick leaves his home and finds himself in a destructive relationship that is both sexually and emotionally abusive, but when he is given the chance to help another person, he finds a new sense of purpose in life.
• Greg at the Station, Wilkinson House, London, 2024.^[28] Part Seven of the Nick & Greg Books. Paris 2019. An incident at the Gare du Nord sends Greg on a rollercoaster journey through dreams and memory. As he navigates the streets and Metro stations he must relive and decipher past events and relationships to make sense of his complex present reality.
• Men in their Passions, Wilkinson House, London, August 2025.^[29] Part of The Drift of Time literary series. A spare and elegiac novel that traces the emotional aftermath of desire through a series of male relationships—each brief, each flawed, each formative.
• Disarranged, Wilkinson House, London, January 2026.^[30] A collection of three new works: Carved, Disarranged, and The Dot. Part of The Drift of Time series.

John Roman Baker spent his formative years in London. At the age of 20 he moved to Paris, where for several years he worked at the British Institute. His poetry was encouraged by the then director of the Institute, Francis Scarfe. Later, in 1974 a volume of his poetry Poèmes à Tristan was published in French by Gérard Oberlé, translated by Françoise du Chaxel, and with an introduction by Jeanne Fayard.^[31] He has always considered himself foremost a poet, and a vein of poetry continues in his plays and novels.

In 1970 he moved from Paris back to England. His poetic novel The Dark Antagonist was published by the Unicorn Bookshop, Brighton in 1973.^[32] In response, the French writer Julien Green wrote "John Roman Baker … a very talented writer, author of a remarkable and moving book: The Dark Antagonist, which I have just read with admiration. I don’t believe I have read anything like it."

John Roman Baker was active in the Gay Liberation Front in Brighton and participated in the organization's pioneering "Gay Day" in 1972^[33] and first Gay Pride March in 1973.^[34]

Unwelcome notoriety was achieved when in 1976 he appeared with Tony Whitehead (later to become the first chairperson of the Terence Higgins Trust^[35]) in a Southern Television program^[36] about Gay Rights. They were pictured together kissing as one of them met the other off a train at Brighton station. As a result of this, Whitehead was immediately fired by his employer British Home Stores. A national outcry galvanised the gay rights movement, led by CHE (The Campaign for Homosexual Equality) and GLF (Gay Liberation Front).

In 1997 he left England for Amsterdam, where he was given the freedom to create and direct new work at the theatre in the former COC Amsterdam building on Rozenstraat until its closure in 2007.

In 2014 he returned to England and created a series of modern historical gay fiction, The Nick & Greg Books. The books chart the lives of two gay teenagers, Nick and Greg, who meet as teens in Brighton in the late 1950s. The books chart their lives and relationships in Brighton, London and Paris from the 1950s into the 21st Century. The books chronicle not only the massive social changes that occur, but also key literary and cultural influences.

In August 2018 and November 2019 he attended the Salon du Livre Gay (Gay Book Fair) in Paris to present The Nick & Greg Books and launch the fourth book in the series Greg in Paris as well as the limited edition hardcover Le Far West.^[37]

In June 2020 a novel entitled 2020 was published. The book, written immediately before the Covid-19 lockdowns began in France and the United Kingdom, presents two characters, Alex and Paul, seeking to defy the coming crisis.