Editor’s Note Happy LGBTQ+ History Month! Every February in the UK LGBTQ+ history takes centre stage and our writers have shone the spotlight on LGBTQ+ individuals from the past – from King Edward II, to Princess Seraphine, to Josephine Baker and Virginia Woolf. Ben Danbury has written a beautiful poem called ‘Defiance’ which inspired me …
By Ben Danbury History can often be understood through the lens of individual struggle. LGBTQ+ history is no exception; for every act of persecution, there were brave people willing to defy societal norms and fight for a more just future. As a bisexual man, I count myself lucky to live in a society that, for …
By Hannah McCann “Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us.” Sappho – Fragment 147 Sappho is an enigma. All we know that she was born sometime around 620 BCE on the Ancient Greek island of Lesbos. We know she had a wealthy family, possibly some brothers, possibly a husband and a daughter …
by Robert Curtis Picture the scene: the year is 1308, and Edward II wears the crown of England. Except today, he has left the crown at home – it’s a tiresome old thing, after all, and he’s worn it for several months without much chance for a break. Here he comes now, strolling through his …
by Bethan Davis Princess Seraphina, whose real name was John Cooper, was the first recognisable drag queen in English history, who took Thomas Gordon to court for stealing his clothes in 1732. The trial of Princess Seraphina was a captivating and enigmatic moment in LGBT+ history; sodomy was a capital punishment, and whilst Gordon outed …
by Mark A Jones On 11th July 1726, William Brown was making his way along a walk in Moorfields, London. This was a notorious place where men could pick up other men. He spotted somebody he thought he knew would be interested in sex and stopped by a wall to pretend to ‘make water’. Brown …
By Hannah McCann There seems to be an incorrect assumption within the LGBTQ+ community that before the Stonewall riots in the summer of 1969, queer individuals lived in secrecy. However, we only have to turn to the vibrant night-life of 1920’s Berlin and the pioneering work of the Institute of Sex Research to uncover a …
By Hannah McCann If you were to travel to St. Louis, Missouri, to the Union Station in the early 1900s, you would see a young black girl playing in the railway yard and making her money by dancing on the street corner. This girl is Freda Josephine McDonald who was born in St. Louis on …
By Hannah McCann The grand country house of Knole is situated in 1,000 acres of Kent countryside near Sevenoaks and has been around since the 14th century. Knole is the setting of our story.
By Anya Goulthorpe Frida Kahlo (1907-54) is known as a mogul of the artistic realm. The average person may know her from the self-portrait ‘with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird’, featuring the now iconic monobrow, which now stands in the artistic hall of fame. However, some – not even avid art enthusiasts – may know Kahlo’s …
