For centuries, the needle and thread have been tacitly assigned to female hands. But history is, as often happens, more complex and layered than conventions would have us believe. Joseph McBrinn demonstrates this with acumen and rigour in his book Queering the Subversive Stitch: Men and the Culture of Needlework, the first systematic study devoted to the male presence in the world of embroidery and textile arts. Published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts in the spring of 2021, the volume opens an unexpected breach in the history of making, uncovering a hidden (and often erased) tradition of men who, from the Middle Ages onwards, have sewn, embroidered, made lace, knitted, tailored…