Around the world in 80 gays

What always amazes me are unexpected connections between people, places and events. Those of my age may remember James Burke's TV series called "Connections". It was a bit like the "6 degrees of separation" game.

My brain is full of LGBT "Connections". I thought I'd use these to develop a little game for next year's LGBT exhibition. It's called "Around the World in 80 Gays". I'm so enthusiastic about it that I've even copyrighted the title and idea. There's a lot of local lLGBT connections that reach around the world and back again. One idea I had for my game is a "floor-tour". At the exhibition a trail of footprints on the floor will lead from one display panel to another, giving a link between the two, and on to another one. I'm not sure if I'll actually be able to include "80 Gays" (actually 80 LGBTs) but I'm going to have fun trying.Until then, here's an example of how to get from Kenneth Willams to Dorothy's Ruby Slippers in 5 moves:

1) Kenneth Williams was a close friend of Leicester's Joe Orton.
2) Joe Orton's biography, "Prick Up Your Ears", was written by John Lahr.
3) John Lahr also wrote the biography of his own father, Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion in "The Wizard of Oz".
4) The Cowardly Lion costume was designed by gay costume designer Adrian.
5) Adrian also designed Dorothy's Ruby Slippers.

If you know any similar connections with a local to global link, let me know. You could end up with a mention at the exhibition.

What's been happening?

It's been a busy time since LGBT History Month. Many thanks to all who came to the exhibition launch at Waterstones and those who came to see it during the week. I was particularly pleased to see my family trees high on the list of favourite sections. I am still researching the ancestry of a couple of members of the local LGBT community, one of them Narvel Annable.This week I was asked by the BBC to come up with some ghostly and ghastly LGBT stories. There are hundreds of "ghastly" stories to tell of homophobia, abuse and discrimination - but I got the impression that that dumbed-down, tabloid-style titillation stories were all they were interested in. They certainly showed no sign of interest in hearing the truth about that vile, football manager bigot they help to glorify.

Fortunately there was a story which immediately came to mind because it happened (quite literally) in my back yard. When I first moved to Nottingham I lived at Canning Circus in one of the old almshouses at the entrance to the cemetery. About a year after I moved in I noticed one morning that the cemetery gates were locked. I discovered later that a chopped-up human body had been found in several black bin-liners. I was quite shocked because I remembered walking past those bin-liners the day before.

The body was that of Grenville Carter, a gay loner who lived a few doors away. He had befriended a bisexual rough-sleeper in the cemetery called Simon Charles and invited him to share his flat with him. All very charitable and worthy but it is a classic case of not picking up someone in strange circumstances. After a few weeks Charles began to get violent. Then one day he snapped, and strangled Grenville with an electric flex. Charles said at his trial "he was irritating". Grenville's body was sliced up with a Stanley knife and hacksaw and deposited in the cemetery. Charles claimed he got the idea after reading about the gay serial killer Denis Nilsen.
Several days later Charles gave himself up. He's now serving a life sentence. What is even scarier is the fact that Charles had already served a prison sentence for attempted murder in Manchester.

A macabre twist is that Charles considered creating a "work of art" out of Grenville's body parts. "I didn't think Grenville would mind", Charles said at his trial.All this is horrible, but I hope that Grenville Carter, on what would have been his 65th birthday this month, will be remembered for his charitable act rather than by the manner of his death.

To return to Nottinghamshire's Rainbow Heritage click on www.nottsrainbowheritage.org.uk

Out Of Their Trees - Two Family Connections

Just this Christmas, sitting in a pub, I had a discussion with my ex on evolution and the Biblical Genesis. I'm a Christian and he describes himself as a pagan by nature, so we have different - but not necessarily opposing - beliefs. As a geologist by qualification I have no problem with NOT taking the (Jewish/Babylonian) Genesis story as literal truth. But that's a debate for other places and other people to discuss elsewhere. But it reminded me of the struggle my distant cousin, Charles Darwin, had when he came up with the theory of evolution in the first place. It affected him so much that it took him 20 years to make his mind up about publishing it.

Through his father Darwin is related to my father, both being descended from the Alveys. The Alveys have lived for centuries along the Trent valley. The Darwins themselves lived at Elston Hall for a while.

Next week sees the bicentennary of Charles Darwin's birth. Lots of events are going on worldwide (John Lynch, an American gay professor and leading Darwinism scholar, is appearing all over the place!), but there's nowt happening at Wollaton! My family are making the most of what little is on offer to celebrate our famous "uncle".

It's the Darwin link which got me interested in "celebrity" and famous ancestries when I was a teenager. Last week I found out I was distantly related (on my mother's side this time) to local gay writer Samuel Butler (1835-1902). Samuel was a son of the rector of Langar who disapproved of his son's choice of vocation as an artist, and this was a cause of bad feeling all their lives. What would the rector have though if he'd known his son was gay? But it's Butler's writings which have made him well-known, not his art.As it happens, Butler brings us back to Darwin.

During the 1870s/80s Butler wrote several books arguing against Darwin's theories. Scientists regarded Samuel as a mere idiosyncratic amateur - "... the abuse that was heaped upon me was more unmeasured than I have had to encounter", Butler wrote. But today evolution seems so obvious, and has led to many geneticists (quite a few of them gay, like Dean Hamer) to try to find a "gay gene". (I've still got a pair of gay jeans I've not worn for years!)

PANTO TIME - OH YES IT IS!

January is the month of pantomime. Every town has one, either professional or amateur. I must admit that I'm a big panto fan - it was a big part in my upbringing. Before moving to Nottingham I performed in many amateur pantos in my home village of Misterton between the ages of 7 and 37, donning dame costume twice.

The panto dame has attracted more than its fair share of gay performers. Perhaps the best of these is Nottingham's own Douglas Byng from the 1920s onwards. He's quite well-known in LGBT circles, so I'd like to write about an unknown performer, who was equally at home playing panto dame and demon.

Last November I mentioned my Uncle Bill - Will Hayes - the war-time companion of my grandfather, who was a real showman. In Winter he would take a few months off from his job at the village engineering works to appear in panto around the country. The photo here shows him in one of his dame costumes taken in the 1920s. He died just before I was born, but thanks to my mother I feel I knew him.

My mother told many stories about Uncle Bill. My favourites were about his magic act and how the Magic Circle would ask him to test new tricks from the US before letting them be performed in the UK. One was a new "cutting a lady in half" trick. My mother, as usual, was the guinea pig - I mean, magician's assistant. Uncle Bill would often read the instructions, inspect the apparatus, and do things his way! This time he had trouble with the blades. Pulling and pushing them they just wouldn't "go through". My mother was in agony. The blades were actually cutting into her and she pleaded with Uncle Bill to read the instructions again. One slight adjustment, and the trick worked, and my mother literally lived to tell the tale.

During World War II Uncle Bill and my mother's Aunt Emily, a dance teacher, produced fund-raising concerts and pantos for the war effort. As well as my mother's family many local people were "recruited" to the concert parties. My mother often laughed uncontrollably when she told the story about marionette sketches. Uncle Bill was a strict professional, and often during rehearsal would shout at my mother and aunts, "Stop buggering about! The puppets feet are supposed to touch the bloody floor, not float in mid-air!"

Thanks to my mother's stories about Uncle Bill's magic I leant how to amaze my little nephews and niece with just 10 playing cards. And I can still remember the stunned look on the faces of the bar staff at Broadway when I performed my "Impossible Miracle" trick several years ago (didn't get me a free drink though!).

To return to Notinghamshire's Rainbow Heritage click on http://www.nottsrainbowheritage.org.uk/

Advent 4

I know this is a week late, due to me having to make last minute rearrangements for Christmas. I was going to was wish you all a Merry Christmas, and mention that the excesses of food and wine this week would have been helped by those of you who are, shall we say, a bit older than myself, possibly stocking up on Christmas cheer at an outlet in Nottingham and Worksop called Skinnner and Rook.

In Nottingham the manager of this shop in the late 1950s and early 1960s was Clive Johnstone-Wilson. In the pre-decriminalisation days of homosexuality Clive was a rampant bisexual orgy-lover (much to the chagrin of his wife).

In true Advent spirit I will leave you this year with a feeling of anticipation of what revelations are to come ahead. There's so much to look forward to in 2009, not least of all LGBT History Month in February. Nottinghamshire's Rainbow Heritage is planning a number of events to celebrate. So I'll leave more about Clive Johnstone-Wilson, and his more famous brother the writer Angus Wilson, until next year.

From me, and Nottinghamshire's Rainbow Heritage, have a Happy New Year.

To return to Nottinghamshire's Rainbow Heritage click on www.nottsrainbowheritage.org.uk

Advent 3

Do you wish Christmas was banned? Join the Puritan Club - the party-pooper kings. Though their intentions may have been sound their enthusiasm went against them. Under the Puritanical Oliver Cromwell, Christmas (including parties, games and mince pies) was illegal. In fact, anything that smacked of something the Catholics and Royalists supported was opposed by Cromwell.

The name Cromwell has appeared before in this blog: Oliver was greatnephew of Thomas. One Cromwell outlaws gay sex and the other outlaws Christmas - the family doesn't appeal to me very much!

Oliver Cromwell took a political road to enforce his Puritanism, but originally the Puritans wanted to worship simply without persecution. The Anglicans said they should worship the Anglican way or go to jail. Even death threats were made. The Catholics had been through all of this before, but this time the Puritans had an escape route - America.

Nottinghamshire is proud to be the home of the Pilgrim Fathers. These Bassetlaw Puritans worshipped in private and decided to found a new community in America. So, in 1620 they set sail with their followers on the Mayflower. Hundreds joined them over the next decades.

They took their Puritan beliefs with them. And the statute of 1534 which criminalised "active" gay sex. Plymouth colony introduced its own sodomy laws with the death penalty. In 1634 John Allexander and Thomas Roberts were found guilty of "lewd behaviour ... and spending their seed upon another". Because no penetration was proved they escaped hanging and were whipped. And in 1642 Elizabeth Johnson was found guilty of "unseemly behaviour" with a maid.

As the American colonies developed into the United States, same-sex activity became less of an issue so that, eventually, gay communities developed in places like San Francisco long before anywhere else in the world.

To return to Nottinghamshire's Rainbow Heritage click on www.nottsrainbowheritage.org.uk

Advent 2

There was a piece in the papers last week about the tradition of appointing a "boy-bishop", when a chorister was chosen to act as mock bishop at Christmas. It was very popular in medieval times. The boy-bishop conducted services and was treated like his adult counterpart even by the highest in the land.

This included the butch queen King Edward II, who received the boy-bishop of St. Mary's church, Nottingham, in 1316 while he spent his usual Christmas at the Castle.King Edward liked Nottingham. He appointed his equally butch boyfriend Piers Gaveston as its Constable, and held (usually all-male) parties throughout Christmas, from which even his wife was excluded.

Another bishoply connection with St. Mary's comes in the person of Dr. David Hope. He is famous as being the Archbishop of York who described his sexuality as a "grey area". He studied at Nottingham University in the 1960s and would have been familiar with St. Mary's.Dr. Hope's coat of arms shows his personal devotion to St. Mary (of course a central figure at Christmas) in the form of a fleur-de-lys and the colour blue - St. Mary's emblems. The design includes other clues to his life and career. The yellow part represents a church roof and also signifies his father's occupation of a builder. The pattern of tiles is called "papillony" and is meant to look like scales on a butterfly wing. Which is rather interesting. In France and Spain the slang name for a gay man is "butterfly" ("papillon" and "mariposa" respectively). So is Dr. Hope secretly revealing more about his sexuality than his words have done?

To return to Nottinghamshire's Rainbow Heritage, click on http://www.nottsrainbowheritage.org.uk/