Playwright Maureen Duffy receives Attitude Icon Award

British poet, playwright and novelist Maureen Duffy has won an Icon Award for Outstanding Achievement, supported by Sky, at the Attitude Awards 2014.

Attitude’s Editor-at-Large, Paris Lees, presented Duffy with her Icon Award, one of three handed out at tonight’s star-studded awards ceremony at Banqueting House in Whitehall, London.

The 80-year-old was the first woman in British public life to be open about her homosexuality when she came out through her work in the early 1960s, and has since led the charge against Section 28, as well as being a vocal HIV/AIDS activist.

Her first novel, That’s How It Was, was published in 1962, and she has gone on to pen a wealth of novels, plays and poetry collections. Her most recent novel, In Times Like These: a Fable, was published last year.

Speaking to Attitude about gay rights today, she urged people to do what they can to fight inequality and make sure “we don’t lose what we’ve won”.

She added: “Live your life. If you are the kind of person who can do something towards trying to diminish the inequalities that still exist, do it.”