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Both men had numerous gay affairs – including with each other, and the artist Duncan Grant. From their secret society at Cambridge University called ‘The Apostles’, the group, who were liberal in terms of their politics and their personal relationships, eventually settled around Gordon Square in the Bloomsbury area of London, to become known as the ‘Bloomsbury Group’.Īt the epicentre of the Bloomsbury Group were the biographer and writer Lytton Strachey and the economist John Maynard Keynes. In the early 20th century a set of young, Cambridge-educated men sought to break free of the Victorian morals which had put Oscar Wilde in prison. 51 Gordon Square WC1H ( More ) John Maynard Keynes, No, 46 Gordon Square WC1H ( More) ↑ Back to top Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes and the Bloomsbury Groupīlue Plaques: Lytton Strachey, No. Maggi Hambling’s statue of Wilde, called A Conversation with Oscar Wilde, is placed at the end of Adelaide Street near Charing cross station. Number 14 on the same street – which is now Flemings Hotel – was the inspiration for Algernon Moncrieff’s bachelor pad in ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’. Other London places connected to Oscar Wilde include 40 Half Moon Street in Piccadilly where his first lover, and his best friend, the journalist Robert Ross lived. Society as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. In his De Profundis letter, written whilst he was in prison and published in 1905, Wilde wrote: He served his time in Wandsworth prison and Reading goal, and then left for Europe, bankrupt and suffering from increasing ill health. Wilde’s ghost criss-crosses London: from the Haymarket Theatre where A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband premiered in the 1890s to his reclining statue on Adelaide Street and Bow Street magistrates court, where in 1895 he was tried for gross indecency and sentenced to two years hard labour.
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Like many thousands of Londoners before and after him. Famed for his plays, prose and poetry and then forever associated with the conviction he received, and the prison sentence he served. There’s no gay Londoner, no gay man in Britain, more famous – or infamous – than Oscar Wilde. Queer Plaques! Blue Plaques of Famous Gay Londoners Oscar Wildeīlue Plaque: Oscar Wilde, 34 Tite Street, Chelsea, SW3 4JA ( More) Ackerley Charles Robert Ashbee.Īnd plaques that don’t exist yet, but that we would like to see, including: Binkie Beaumont George Michael Quentin Crisp Mary Benson Howard Hodgkin. Other gays who have plaques put up by other organisations include: Joe Orton Mark Ashton Kenny Everett Frankie Howerd J.R. Forster Siegfried Sassoon Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West Alan Turing John Gielgud Kenneth Williams Ivor Novello Derek Jarman Freddie Mercury Francis Bacon. Coming soon, we plan to develop this into a number of walking tours of London.įamous LGBTQ+ people with English Heritage blue plaques include: Oscar Wilde Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes and the Bloomsbury Group Radclyffe Hall Noel Coward E.M. Also check out our London Gay History section. If you have any suggestions we would love to hear from you. Here’s a rough guide to some of the most obvious ones, but we are also on the hunt for more hidden examples. Some of the famous ones get Plaques, particularly the Blue Plaques organised by English Heritage, to mark where notable Londoners have lived.
#Famous gay men history full
We will never know the full extent of this contribution, but for the people who forged a reputation that has lived on beyond their death, and whose sexuality became known, we are able to celebrate their lives.
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In every profession and walk of life, LGBTQ+ people have contributed to the city. For most of its long history, London has been in denial about the gay men and women who have made an indelible impact on it.