Sodomites and catamites

Miles Pattenden begins his review by asserting that historians have grappled with the concept of gay history since Michel Foucault published his History of Sexuality. In fact by the time Foucault published the first volume in 1976 (translated into English two years later), there was a considerable historical literature in a number of countries, asking exactly this question. I recall a meeting with American gay and lesbian historians in the late 1970s who were discussing how far Foucault's work might lead them to reconsider their own. Foucault was undoubtedly a major philosophical figure, but he was neither as original nor as ground-breaking in his discussion of homosexuality as is sometimes assumed. Ironically, Pattenden implicitly acknowledges this in his second paragraph.