Kate Aaron's Blog, page 12

The History of Homosexuality: Wolfenden to Legalisation

Ten years passed between the publication of the Wolfenden report and the legalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales. The history books usually gloss over that decade, seeming to assume that’s just how long it takes to implement major social reform. Governments aren’t known for acting quickly. Yet glossing over that key decade is to […]

People in History: Peter Wildeblood

Peter Wildeblood was born in Italy in 1923, the only child of Henry Wildeblood, a retired engineer from the Indian Public Works Department, and his second wife Winifred, daughter of an Argentinian sheep rancher. (He had older brothers from his father’s first marriage, but as they were already grown with families of their own when […]

The History of Homosexuality: The Wolfenden Report

In 1954, following the high-profile convictions of Lord Montagu, Michael Pitt-Rivers, and Peter Wildeblood for homosexual crimes under the infamous 1885 Labouchere Amendment, and more significantly the turn of public opinion against the prosecutors of that case, the Home Secretary ordered that a committee which had been set up in order to look into the […]

People in History: Alan Turing

Alan Turing was born in 1912, second child of Julius and Ethel. His father held a position with the India Civil Service,but his parents returned to England before Alan’s birth, keen for their sons to be raised in England.When his parents needed to return to India, they left the boys in the care of a […]

The History of Homosexuality: The Gay Pogrom

The 1950s was a dark decade for queer Englishmen. Between 1945 and 1955, arrests for “gross indecency” soared to over 2,500 a year, with an average of 1,000 men being incarcerated annually. It was a marked increase, seen by many as a targeted persecution, and became known as the “gay pogrom.” Those who believe that […]

People in Fiction: Brideshead Revisited

SubtitledThe Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder,Brideshead Revisitedwas written in a three month period in early 1943 while Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was on leave from the army. On the surface, Bridesheadis a simple story of friendship gone awry. Charles Ryder, while an undergraduate at Oxford, meets and becomes friends with Lord Sebastian Flyte, […]

People in History: WWI Poets

Poet’s Corner is the name given to thesection of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey where some of England’s most famous writers are interred or memorialised. In 1985, a slate was added, commemorating sixteen poets of the Great War. They wereRichard Aldington, Laurence Binyon, Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Wilfrid Gibson, Robert Graves, Julian Grenfell, Ivor […]

The History of Homosexuality: Romantic Friendships

I’d apologise in advance for the gratuitous photo-dump in this post, but I’m not sorry. Not the slightest bit The concept of romantic friendships has been around since before the days when Plato gave his name to loving somebody without involving sex. To the Greeks (or at least the Athenian Greeks), it was a […]

People in Fiction: The Charioteer

First published in 1953, Mary Renault’s lyrical novelThe Charioteeris the story of Laurie “Spud” Odell’s coming-of-age, set against the backdrop of the Second World War. That Renault was informed by the works of Freud is apparent from the very first chapter, when five-year-old Laurie’s father walks out. Laurie is in bed, but not asleep. Ten […]

People in History: Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was a neurologist by training, best remembered today as the father of psychoanalysis. His theories on sexuality and childhood development areprobably best known, although his work spanned a much broader spectrum,including writings on the development of civilisation, the unconscious and dream-states, and religion. He alsoextolled the virtues of cocaine, and regularly took […]