Background
He grew up in London and was educated at the independent The Haberdashers" Aske"s Boys" School, going on to read English at Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduating in 1982.
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Oscar Moore
Edit ProfileCareer
He worked as a journalist and critic, under his own name and various pseudonyms, to such magazines as Time Out, I-Doctorate, The Times, Punch, The Evening Standard, and The Fred Magazine (in which his novel was first serialised). He was editor of The Business of Film magazine during the mid-1980s, and served as editor of the journal Screen International from 1991 until his death. A Matter of Life and Sex is an autobiographical novel recounting the coming of age of a gay man, Hugo Harvey, who engages in sex from a young age and later, during college, works at least part-time as a prostitute, contracting Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome in the mid-1980s before the advent of effective anti-Human Immunodeficiency Virus drugs.
The novel describes the protagonist"s relationships with his family (most significantly with his mother), his school friends, his casual sex mates, and with other friends battling Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Moore himself has been described as "handsome, bright, witty, and gay," and worked occasionally as a male escort in addition to his magazine work.
He lived with Human Immunodeficiency Virus for the last 13 years of his life, and from 1994 to 1996 wrote a regular column for The Guardian entitled "Public Works Administration (Person With Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome)." Moore lost his sight owing to his Human Immunodeficiency Virus infection and died of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome-related illness in 1996 at the age of 36. A book collecting his "Public Works Administration" columns was published a month after his death.
A stage adaptation was produced in London in 2001.
