1930 - 1939
Under construction
1930 Magnus Hirschfeld embarks on a 500-day journey around the world, lecturing on sexual
reform.
An extended edition of Cançōes by António Botto includes more homoerotic poems.
Das Problem der Homosexualität by Alfred Adler: “The question of homosexuality hovers
over society like a ghostly scarecrow. In spite of all the condemnation, the number
of perverts seems to be on the increase.”
Thomas Mann wrote an influential essay on August von Platen.
Opium by John Cocteau is infused by the presence of his schoolboy crush, Dargelos.
12 April. E.M. Forster meets policeman Bob Buckingham at J.R. Ackerley’s Boat Race
party. Buckingham (28) will become the love of Forster’s life.
April. Noël Coward & Cecil Beaton meet for the first time onboard ship. Coward lectured
Beaton for being too effeminate.
Nanshoku-k by Iwata Jun’ichi, a series of articles on Man-Love/Lust is published in Japan.
Three Sailors on the Beach, art by Charles Demuth – contains an erect penis & another man
holding his.
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. It contains several characters with unfortunate
queer stereotypes, eg. Joel Cairo.
The Bridge, a long poem by Hart Crane.
Parties by Carl Van Vechten – 2 male protagonists wake up in bed together & discuss last
night in a Harlem speakeasy.
Literary critic William Empson attempts to strangle Sybil Lee at a party in a jealous rage
over her husband, former undergraduate Desmond Lee.
The matador Sidney Franklin almost dies when gored by a dying bull. He was homosexual
and was comforted in his retirement by many young bullfighting protégés.
Around this time explorer Richard Halliburton met journalist Paul Mooney and they become
lovers and collaborators for the rest of their life.
Lorca writes an Ode to Walt Whitman in which he dreams of a world in which homosexuality
was free of shame and promiscuity.
The German biographer of Brahms said of Tchaikovsky that he was: “inwardly torn by the
tragedy of his unhappy disposition.”
Wittgenstein meets Frank Skinner and they become intense friends for almost a decade.
Le Sang d’un Poete, the first film directed by Jean Cocteau is released. The movie is imbued
with the image of Dargelos, his beautiful schoolboy crush.
Le Livre Blanc by Jean Cocteau is reissued with Cocteau’s erotic drawings.
Sylvia Townsend Warner meets Valentine Ackland. They would eventually become lifelong
companions.
Suzy Solidor becomes a popular nightclub singer with fashionable bobbed hair at La Vie
Parisienne.
Henry Hay (17) picks up his first man, who informed him about the 1924 Chicago Society.
Artist Einar Wegener (47) has gender realignment surgery and is known as Lili Elbe.
William Lygon, Lord Beauchamp visits Australia, taking his lover, Robert Bernays.
May. Hart Crane manages to have a few happy days with a sailor.
Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies contains a character Miles Malpractice, which is supposedly
based on the rackety homosexual Eddie Gathorne-Hardy.
Sudden death of Christopher Morcom, close school-friend of Alan Turing.
c.1930 Montague Glover (32), architect, meets Ralph Hall (17), a working-class lad, and they
become life-long partners for over 50 years.
James Whale, film director meets David Lewis, story editor, and they have a 20-year
relationship.
1931 Magnus Hirschfeld (63) on his world tour meets Li Shiu Tong (24), who drops his studies to
follow Hirschfeld. They become lovers.
The Waves by Virginia Woolf. Contains the homosexual character, Neville.
A correspondence begins on homosexual subjects between Minakata Kumagusu and Iwata
Jun’ichi begins.
The Loveliest of Friends by G. Sheila Donisthorpe, a novel of lesbian lives.
William Lygon, Earl of Beauchamp is divorced by his wife after several affairs with
handsome footmen, other servants & socialites.
Uncle Stephen by Forrest Reid – first part of the Tom Barber Trilogy – imaginative &
sensitive Tom develops from the age of 10.
The Blood of the Poet by Jean Cocteau is released, infused with Pierre Dargelos.
Gottfried von Cramm (30) met Manasse Herbst (18), light opera singer and actor, and they
fall in love.
Un Tactiturne, a play by Roger Martin du Gard – an older man has an impossible passion for
a younger protégé.
Gottlieb Harms dies (38) & his lover Hans Henny Jahn designs his gravestone.
Carl Van Vechten meets Mark Lutz, and they enter a romantic relationship and correspond
with more than 10,000 letters. Unfortunately, they were destroyed on Lutz’s
death.
Strange Brother by Blair Niles. It dramatizes among other things Leland B. Petit’s suicide
over a boy when he was an organist of the All Saints Cathedral Choir in Harlem.
Sado by William Plomer. A novel of a same-sex relationship in modern Japan.
Boy, a homosexual novel by James Hanley is published to good reviews, but 4 years later it
would be condemned and the publisher fined.
Paneros by Norman Douglas – an exposition of erotic philosophy, and the art of getting sex,
without stating the gender of the object of desire.
The Innocent by John Henry Mackay – obviously homosexual characters even though novel
published under his own name.
Paul Cadmus paints what he considers his best painting of his bisexual lover, Jerry.
Strange Brother by Blair Niles is published, she lists several famous same-sex lovers.
Saturday at the Greyhound by John Hampson is published by the Hogarth Press. This was a
veiled homosexual novel. The Hogarth press rejected Go Seek a Stranger,
which was his much more explicit first-written novel, and which Virginia Woolf
thought his best.
Bruno Vogel realises that Nazi are a danger to homosexuals and leaves Germany.
Los placers ocultos by Luis Cernuda contains several homoerotic poems.
Mercedes de Acosta begins a sporadic and volatile affair with Greta Garbo.
Aaron Copland (32) composer meets Victor Kraft (16), future photographer. They have an
intimate relationship, which cools after 12 years into a lifelong friendship.
Bobbie Shaw (Nancy Astor’s son) was arrested for involvement in a homosexual act.
Lytton Strachey & Roger Senhouse have a secret sado-masochistic affair for a couple of
years.
James Whale directs Frankenstein – he informs Colin Clive that it would “contain a great
deal of us.” Whale’s homosexuality informed his sense of the Creature as an
outsider.
Noël Coward’s song ‘Bright Young People’ features the use of the word ‘gay’ as code for
homosexual.
The C.B. Cochran review Helen! has camp interior-décor designs by Oliver Messel.
February. Albert Edwards, Australian politician, accused of committing an “unnatural
offence” on a young Adelaide man & an act of gross indecency at a nearby
seaside town. He was found guilty of the first, but acquitted of the second.
Death of Frank Ramsey, British philosopher, ending his brief affair with Wittgenstein.
While at Oxford, James Lees-Milne (23) has an affair with John Gielgud (27), who pays for
everything. On JLM’s side the infatuation lasted for 6 weeks.
Mädchen [Girls] in Uniform is produced – the first lesbian-themed film.
1931-3 Paul Cadmus travels through Europe with his bisexual lover, and fellow artist, Jared French.
1932 The Fortune Press publishes Strato’s Boyish Muse.
Sexual Life in Ancient Greece by Hans Licht.
Hindoo Holiday by J.R. Ackerley. A thinly-veiled portrait of the antics of Vishwanath Singh,
the homosexual Maharaja of Chhatarpur. Some of the more explicit homosexual
content was removed before publication.
The Memorial by Christopher Isherwood is published by the Hogarth Press. The protagonist
ends the novel in the bed of an attractive, but venal German youth.
Isherwood met E.M. Forster for the first time. Forster lends him a privately-printed copy of
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Le Pur et l’Impur by Collette refers to the Ladies of Llangollen as forerunners of modern
lesbianism.
Infants of the Spring by Wallace Thurman – a satire of the Harlem Renaissance.
Design for Living by Noël Coward – a relationship between 2 men and a woman.
Noel Coward also composes ‘Mad About the Boy.’
Alexander by Klaus Mann – Alexander the Great.
Ladies from Wilko by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz – a conventional affair based on his affair with
a man.
An article ‘Bachelor’s Bounce’ in Harpar’s Bazaar discusses Cecil Beaton, Noël Coward,
Robert Byron & Beverley Nichols without reference to their sexuality.
Magnus Hirschfeld returns from his world tour, but is advised not to return to Germany. He
brings back Li Shiu Tong (23) Chinese medical student. Harl Giese travels to
Paris to meet them. Initially, there is some jealousy. However, they live in
Paris in a ménage a trois, before moving to Nice.
It was later alleged to ruin his character, that Leopold Ries, Dutch civil servant, was at a gay
party, but at which no indecent acts had taken place.
Meeting Point in Infinity by Klaus Mann – unrequited love experienced by homosexual
characters, as is drug addiction, alienation & city life.
Cole Porter writes the song ‘Night and Day’, inspired by architect Ed Tauch, for the musical
The Gay Divorce.
Lord Berners meets “Boy” Percy, who becomes his long-term boyfriend.
Fairfield Porter, American painter, falls in unrequited love with Arthur Giardella, an English art
student.
Francis Poulenc begins an affair with chauffeur Raymond Destouches, who moves into Le
Grand Coteau.
Stephen Spender has a 4-year affair with Tony Hyndman.
Autumn – Aaron Copland meets violinist Victor Kraft (17), and they become same-sex partners
on holiday in Mexico. Copland’s career begins to take off influenced by
Mexican cadences.
April. Hart Crane makes sexual advances to a crew member on a ship bound for Cuba, and
jumps overboard the following day.
March 13. Christopher Isherwood (28) meets Heinz Neddermeyer (17), a working-class
German in Berlin.
James Lees-Milne gains employment as secretary to George, 1st Baron Lloyd, a repressed
homosexual, and former governor of Bombay & High Commissioner in Egypt.
Lees-Milne meets Harold Nicholson & Kit Hobhouse. The latter have an affair.
Lees-Milne also meets Eddy Sackville-West, who may have had a brief infat-
uation with him.
Lord Berners (50) fell in love with Robert “Boy” Heber-Percy (22), who becomes his life-
long companion and efficient administrator of the Farringdon Estate.
Grant Richard in his memoirs, Memories of a Misspent Youth, recalls Baron Corvo at
Parson’s Pleasure in Oxford: “surveying the yellow flesh tints of youth with
unbecoming satisfaction.”
1933 The Young and Evil by Charles Henri Ford & Parker Tyler is published by Obelisk Press.
“The first candid, gloves-off account of more or less professional homosexuals.”
The Fortune Press publishes Petronius’ Satyricon, Little Victims by Richard Rumbold &
Terence Greenridge’s The Magnificent.
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West. Featuring the bullying and torture of an unnamed
victim.
Four Saints in Three Acts by Gertrude Stein & Virgil Thomson causes a sensation. Many
connected with it were homosexual: the librettist and composer; the scenarist,
Maurice Grosser; the choreographer, Frederick Ashton & the Harvard
modernists, Lincoln Kirstein & Philip Johnson.
Eric Thorsell gives a lecture ‘Are the Homosexuals Outlaws or Criminals?’ – first lecture on
this subject in Sweden.
António by António Botto – dramatic novel – an adolescent dancer & an aristocratic young
man’s relationship.
Looking Back by Norman Douglas – reading between the lines is required.
Oxford Apostles by Geoffrey Faber portrays John Henry Newman as a sublimated homo-
sexual with feminine characteristics.
February. On Isherwood’s second visit. E.M. Forster lets Isherwood see a typescript of the
unpublished Maurice.
May. Christopher Isherwood & Heinz Neddermeyer flee Berlin on the rise of the Nazis.
August. Hans Henny Jahn flees to Zurich to avoid the Nazis.
September. Stephen Spender meets Tony Hyndman, an unemployed working-class Cardiff
youth. They live together for 3 years.
October. Niels Bukh, Danish P.E. pioneer & Nazi supporter, has his 1920s affair with teacher
Kristian Krogshede & an attempted seduction of a pupil reported to the
authorities. They will expose him, unless he stops publicly endorsing the Nazis.
Paul Cadmus paints The Fleet’s In! – a large oil painting of sailors in tight-fitting, revealing
uniforms – and YMCA Locker Room.
William Haines, actor, is arrested with a sailor in a YMCA. Louis B. Meyer asks him to
choose between a sham marriage, his relationship with Jimmie Shields or the
sailor. He chooses Shields, and will soon give up acting and become an interior
designer.
Venus Castina by C.J. Buillet. [more info?]
Little Victims by Richard Rumble. It includes homosexuality at public schools.
Whether a Dove or a Seagull by Sylvia Townsend Warner & Valentine Ackland.
Better Angel by Richard Meeker. The protagonist cites the fraternity of Plato, Cellini,
Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Ellis, Carpenter & Wedekend.
Goldie by ‘Kenilworth Bruce’. The main character realises he is in the company of Diocles,
Achilles, Homer, Alexander the Great, Pythagoras, Demosthenes, Julius Caesar,
Virgil, Cellini, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Francis Bacon.
In Fruits of the Earth by Frederick Grove – the eldest son of the protagonist is a budding
homosexual.
Dr James Barry: Her Secret Story by Olga Racster & Jessica Grove.
The Oxford Union voted against fighting for its King & Country. The right-wing press
blamed among others “sexual indeterminates.”
Willem Arondeus, Dutch painter (38) meets Jan, a grocer’s delivery boy near Apeldoorn, and
they soon move in together, but have to survive extreme poverty.
Beverley Nichols published a pacifist article in Everyman: The World News Weekly, which
was roundly attacked for its feminine tone by J.B. Morton [Beachcomber].
Elisabeth Welch arrives in London, and as an accompanist she meets Reginald Foresythe.
She realises he has discreet encounters with men.
Pavel Tchelitchev (35) meets Charles Ford (23), author, falls in love with him, and leaves
Allen Tanner. They remain together for 24 years.
c1933 James Lees-Milne and David Gore, Earl of Arran share a bed unsuccessfully.
1933-5 T.E.Lawrence pays John Burns directly from his wages. These payments are believed to be
for birchings administered to Lawrence.
1933-40 Jacob Schorer produced Jaarverslagen – annual reports of homosexual articles.
1934 The Fortune Press publishes Reginald Underwood’s Batchelor’s Hall.
The Quest for Corvo by A.J.A. Symonds. A biography of Frederick Rolfe.
The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole by Frederick Rolfe is published after being discover-
ed in the safe of Chatto & Windus. [1910-13]
Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald published. Includes a minor gay character, Luis Campion.
Medicina Legal: A Homosexualidae masculine através dos tempos by Dr Asdrubal de
Aguiar.
Don Leon is republished in France, stamped with instructions not to be taken to England.
[1866] Kit had been published by the Fortune Press, but immediately fell
foul of the obscenity laws and almost all copies were destroyed.
Red Shields by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz – more open about homosexuality than his previous
work.
The Children’s Hour by Lilian Hellman is produced on Broadway. A play inspired by the
lesbianism of the Pirie/Woods case (1811).
Zuiderzee by Joseph Last – 2 masculine seamen have an unconsummated homoerotic
relationship, but it ends tragically.
Jealousy [Ciume] by António Botto.
Raven’s Brood by E.F. Benson. Includes hints of same-sex relationships.
30 June. In the Night of the Long Knives Capt. Ernst Rohm is found in bed with a male
lover. Edmund Heines, Rohm’s deputy (37) was discovered in bed with
his chauffeur (18), so they were both shot.
February. James Lees-Milne (26) and Harold Nicholson (47) become lovers during a
Parisian holiday. They may have remained intermittent lovers until 1951.
Georges Cattaui, 1st secretary at the Egyptian Legation in London is believed to have left his
post after a homosexual scandal.
Charles Henri Ford, novelist & poet, returns to New York with his life-long partner Pavel
Tchelitchew after visiting together Spain & Italy.
Sergei Eistensten (34), film director, is forced to marry his secretary (39) to allay rumours.
Desmond Parsons visits China to meet Harold Acton. They are believed to have been lovers.
Parsons has been described as the true love of Acton’s life.
John Beresford Fowler sets up his interior designer business. He later confides his sexual
problems with James Lees-Milne.
Same-sex relationships are declared illegal in the Soviet Union.
Song of Ceylon by Basil Wright is released. Wright was helped find suitable images of
Ceylon, including scantily-clad young male models by the pioneering photo-
grapher Lionel Wendt, who also narrated the film.
‘Homosexuality & Fascism’ – an essay by Klaus Mann.
Ballad of Angelillo and Adela by Salvador Novo – follows his love affair with Lorca.
The Third Faust by Salvador Novo – Alberto sells his soul to the devil to become a woman to
obtain the love of Armando. However, Armando had already loved Alberto when
he was male.
The Anarchist Crowned by Antonin Artaud – biography of Emperor Elagabalus.
December. Mary Renault approaches fellow nurse Julie Mullard, to ask if she will be in the
play she is producing – a spoof of a Victorian melodrama. Mary played a young
apothecary in love with the evil Sir Jaspar Ruthless, played by Julie Mullard.
1935 Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood. Baron von Pregnitz delicately tries to
ascertain by ambiguous questioning if the narrator has homosexual inclinations.
Sonnets and Lyrics by Lord Alfred Douglas.
6 January. Mary Renault & Julie Mullard make love for the first time, and celebrate the
anniversary of this date ever afterwards.
April. Freud writes to an Mexican woman whose son was homosexual:”it is nothing to be
ashamed of. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have
been homosexuals.”
May. Magnus Hirschfeld dies, leaving his effects jointly to Karl Giese & Li Shiu Tong.
Crossways of Sex by Dr Jacobus X.
Symphonie Pathétique by Klaus Mann – novel depicting Tchaikovsky.
Medea and Some Poems by Countee Cullen – some poems have a veiled gay theme.
Frederico Garcia Lorca writes Sonnets of Dark Love inspired by his affair with Rafael
Rodriguez Rapún. They remain unpublished for 50 years.
Poems for F by Edouard Roditi – dedicated to a successful Austrian portrait painter, after a
tempestuous 2 year-affair.
The Asiatics by Frederic Prokosch. Moments of homoeroticism stud an imagined travelogue
from the Levant to the South China Seas.
June. E.M. Forster meets André Gide at the International Congress of Writers in Paris. It is
an anticlimactic meeting.
Cavafy’s Collected Poems edited by Singopoulos are published.
W.H. Auden marries Erika Mann, the lesbian daughter of Thomas Mann, in order for her to
escape Nazi Germany.
E.M. Forster works on an edition of T.E. Lawrence’s letters, but resigns from the project
because the letters were too frank, Lawrence’s sexuality too ambiguous & his politics
would lead to complications.
Dr Louis Max showed pictures of naked men to homosexuals and then caused them to vomit.
This was an attempt to cure them of their sexual orientation.
A strict anti-homosexual law is introduced in Nazi Germany, which remained in force for
many years.
Tom Driberg is arrested in London for indecent assault after being found in bed with two
Scotsmen. The affair is hushed up by his employer, Beaverbrook.
James Whale directs The Bride of Frankenstein, which contains ‘campy’ humour.
French police reports state that Richard Halliburton, explorer, was often seen soliciting on
Saint-Lazare Street.
Writer Robert Byron is in unrequited love with Desmond Parsons, and lives with him in
Peking.
George Cukor employs William Haines to redecorate his home, which will be the location for
many ‘gay’ parties.
House Without Windows by Joseph Last – a decadent homosexual living in Morocco is
murdered.
The Fleet’s In by Paul Cadmus is censored by an irate admiral, who appropriated the painting
for the Alibi Club. That year Cadmus also sketched a scene at Stewart’s coffee shop
containing homoerotic elements.
December. James Lees-Milne has a one-night stand with George Lennox-Boyd.
Harry Hay (23) future founder of the gay liberation movement, meets Stanley Haggart,
interior designer. They fall instantly in love, but Haggart’s mother thwarts their affair,
and has Stanley inducted into some aversion therapy.
J.R. Ackerley becomes editor of the Listener, a post he holds for 35 years. Did he affect the
queer content it contained?
c.1935 Edward Burra, painted subjects from red-light districts of Boston, Harlem & Toulon.
1935-6 Winter. J.R. Ackerley picks up Frank Harris, from a Welsh slum, at Marble Arch and has an
affair. He was kind, good-natured, patient, and married with a child, but had smelly
feet. He came closest to becoming Ackerley’s ideal of a companion.
1935-42 Cary Grant & Randolph Scott share a beach house in Santa Monica.
1936 The Fortune Press publishes Reginald Underwood’s Flame of Freedom.
Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner. The relationship between Shreve McCannon &
Quentin Compson may be read in a homo-social light.
Dr Matthew O’Connor in Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood is a cross-dressing effeminate man.
Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner. It portrays a lesbian romance set in England
& France.
The Allegory of Love by C.S. Lewis. “The deepest worldly emotion in this period [ie
Medieval] is the love of man for man.”
The Retreat by Forrest Reid – second part of the Tom Barber Trilogy – sensitive Tom
develops further.
Passions by Marguerite Yourcenar – prose poems mainly playing on themes from antiquity
including an ungendered lover.
The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas by Edward Westermarck – A Finnish scholar
includes commentary about homosexuality.
An article in Current Psychology & Psychoanalysis describes the inhabitants of Greenwich
Village as a place of “Freak Exhibits”, these are sexual inverts, members of a third
sex who flaunt their traits in the Village.
Arno Breker creates several male nude sculptures which adorn the Olympic games.
21 May. Henry Cowell (39), composer, arrested for having oral sex with a boy (17).
25 May. Henk Vermeulen (17) alleges Leopold Ries (43), Dutch civil servant, & 8 others had
paid him for sex. All charges were dropped, but one accused committed suicide, as
his career had been destroyed by publicity. Ries was alleged to have contemplated
sex with a soldier 13 years earlier, which smeared his character.
19 August. Frederico Garcia Lorca is executed.
The Mill over Utrata by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz – more open about homosexuality than his
previous work.
Manasse Herbst flees Germany, but his lover Gottfried von Cramm continues illegally to
send him large sums of money.
Michael Davidson cruising in London Swimming baths is imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs.
Laurence Olivier (29) allegedly has an affair with the actor Henry Ainley (57).
Luchino Visconti begins a 3-year relationship with the photographer Horst P. Horst.
August. Harold Nicholson (50) meets and falls in love with James Pope-Hennessey (20).
James was also admired by Nigel Nicholson & James Lees-Milne. Nigel was
traumatised that his father was having an affair with Pope-Hennessey. Lees-Milne
had a decade-long sporadic affair with Pope-Hennessey.
Glenway Westcott, Monroe Wheeler & photographer George Platt Lynes move into a
farmhouse near Clinton, New Jersey.
William Haines & Jimmie Shields are beaten up by white supremacists & others when a
neighbour incorrectly accuses them of propositioning her son.
Critic Rudolf Borchardt writes an unpublished attack Notes on Stefan George, which outs the
poet, his circle, and even some of his own friends.
Kurt Haijby, ship steward, stated in divorce papers that he had committed adultery with King
Gustav V (78) of Sweden. The king later paid 78,000 kronors for his silence.
c.1936 Oliver Messel, set designer, meets Vagn Riis-Hansen and they stay together for 30 years.
1936-8 William Dobell, Australian artist, shares a studio and love of men with Donald Friend.
1936-9 George Platt Lynes produced a series of male nudes representing Greek mythological figures,
such as Birth of Dionysus, Pan, Orpheus and Eros, & Endymion and Selene.
1937 The Fortune Press publishes Reginald underwood’s Hidden Lights.
Katherine Burdekin’s Swastika Night. Youth loving each other reinforces in the mind of a
character a sense of male love’s harmony with nature.
Serenade by James M. Cain. The narrator is of ambiguous sexuality.
Cristobal Balenciaga opens the House of Balenciaga in Paris. He lives with his lover and
mentor the millionaire Wladzio Jaworoswki d’Attainville.
Countée Cullen begins a secret relationship with Edward Atkinson, which lasts until 1945.
They write to each other in code.
Guy Burgess recruits Anthony Blunt as a Russian agent.
Hitler makes the homosexual Arno Breker (37) ‘official state sculptor.’
April. Gottfried von Cramm is questioned by the gestapo.
Valentine Ackland falls in love with Elizabeth Wade White, a wealthy American visitor to
England.
Claude Cahun & Suzanne Malherbe move to Jersey for the former’s health as 2 sisters.
Marguerite Yourcenar meets Grace Frick, they will become lifelong companions & Frick will
become Yourcenar’s translator into English.
Jean Cocteau (48) meets Jean Marais (24) and they live together for a decade. Marais
becomes Cocteau’s muse in several films.
Cole Porter writes the song ‘In the Still of the Night’, inspired by architect Ed Tauch, for the
film Rosalie.
Barred Window by Klaus Mann – novel about homosexual Ludwig II of Bavaria.
2 November. Frank Hird died, and he is buried with Lord Ronald Gower.
The traveller Richard Halliburton decides to settle down in Laguna Beach, California. His
lover Paul Mooney suggests that they commission William Alexander Levy to
design and build Hangover House for them. It is considered a masterpiece.
Thornton Wilder (40) meets Samuel Steward (28), college professor. Their affair was carried
out in Paris and Chicago over a 7-year period.
Heinz Neddermeyer is expelled from Luxembourg & is forced to return to Germany, where he
was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to 3½ years of forced labour. He
doesn’t meet up with Isherwood for 15 years.
Dr Owensby, Atlanta, Georgia, began treating homosexuals with convulsive shock therapy
inducted with a chemical stimulant.
Desmond Parsons dies from Hodgkin’s Disease (26). He had been loved unrequitedly by the
porcine Robert Byron, who promptly transferred his love on to Jame Lees-Milne.
1938 Lionel Wendt’s first solo exhibition was held in London. Many of the Sri Lankan
photographer’s images were homoerotic.
Xuân Diêu (22), shares a home with Huy Cân, fellow Vietnamese Poet for 2 years. They have a
very intense, possibly romantic friendship.
The Black Book by Lawrence Durrell includes the homosexual Tarquin and Livia, a prostitute.
Nostalgia of Death by Xavier Villaurrutia, Mexican poet – contains the excellent homosexual
poems ‘Nocturnal Love’, ‘Nocturne of the Angels’, Sea Nocturne’ & ‘Nocturne of
the Bedroom.’
1 March. James Lees-Milne (29) meets Richard Stewart-Jones (24) and they have an explosive
affair. Rick wanted monogamy and felt guilty, but Lees-Milne was already having
affairs with Pope-Hennessey & Robert Byron. Lees-Milne & Stewart-Jones
effectively lived together as lovers until the outbreak of war. Lees-Milne was also
admired by Ted Lister, a retired diplomat, and Geoffrey Houghton Brown, a clever
businessman, who specialised in buying derelict houses, and making them
habitable.
March. Gottfried von Cramm is convicted of homosexual offences and is given a relatively mild
sentence of a year in prison.
Summer. Mary Renault and Julie Mullard spend 6 weeks in a hotel at Equihen, south of
Boulogne, where Mary started work on a second novel. They read The Well of
Loneliness.
Paul Scott (18) begins an affair with a middle-aged married man, Gerald Armstrong, who
introduces him to the worlds of theatre and ballet.
Glenway Wescott writes an autobiographical homosexual story ‘A Visit to Priapus’.
Richard Schultz (50) meets and falls in love with Hans Spann (35).
US actors Bill Roerick & Tom Coley meet playing small parts in Our Town & become lifelong
partners.
William Lygon, Earl of Beauchamp dies in New York, and leaves property to David Smyth, his
final lover.
Ottone Rosai, artist, is reprimanded for his frequenting of male prostitutes. His fascist
membership saves him from imprisonment.
1938-41 Mário de Andrade attends many meeting with younger writers, savouring their company, but
never betraying his homosexuality.
1939 January. Auden & Isherwood leave England for America. Auden (32) meets Chester Kallman
(18), an opera fan. They become lovers & lifelong partners, but Kallman cannot be
faithful.
Christianity and Morals by Edward Westermarck – an unmarried homosexual Finnish scholar.
February. Purposes of Love published [Promise of Love in US] by Mary Renault.
April. Benjamin Britten sails to Canada, and is accompanied by tenor Peter Pears. They
become lifelong lovers.
Richard Cowan commits suicide leaving his mentor and lover Stewart Mitchell devastated.
The traveller Richard Halliburton (39), and his journalist lover Paul Mooney (34) are drowned
when the ship on which they are travelling, the Sea Dragon, is lost in a typhoon.
The Mulatto Woman from Cordoba written by companions Xavier Villaurrutia & Agustin Lazo.
Le Coup de grâce by Marguerite Yourcenar – includes Eric, a male homosexual.
Yourcenar works on an edition of Cavafy’s poems, including a prefatory essay, but they were
not published until 1958.
Mikhail Kuzmin dies from pneumonia, ending his long romance with Yury Yurkin.
The US artist Paul Cadmus reads E.M. Forster’s ‘What I Believe’ in the Nation & writes him a
fan letter.
Maurice Sachs enlists in the French army, but is discharged for sexual misconduct.
Richard Hoeppli persuades Edmund Backhouse to write his pornographic homosexual
memoirs. One of these Décadence Mandchoue was eventually published in 2011. It
includes the gay life of imperial Bejiing.
My Royal Past by Cecil Beaton – spoof autobiography with photos of cross-dressed friends.
Marsden Hartley’s painting Christ Held by Half-naked Men is unveiled.
Juan Goytisolo Gay (8) is molested by his maternal grandfather.
Joannes Henri François writes a pamphlet about a shocking homosexual scandal in the
Netherlands East Indies.
The Dancing Years by Ivor Novello – know by its author as The Prancing Queers.
The film The Arsenal Stadium Mystery has Inspector Slade in a series of compromising
positions: interviewing in a steaming bath, reading a newspaper covering a naked
bottom of a player. He finds the case a thrilling prospect: “Well, all these outdoor
fellows with there er…shorts on.”
The People reported that same-sex bars “flourish by the score in dingy side-streets, alley-ways,
cellars and basements between Oxford Street & Charing Cross.
5 April 1939. Donald Lennox-Boyd is found hanging in his cell after being arrested by the
Gestapo for homosexual offences.
Billy Strayhorn, Jazz composer, meets and falls in love with Aaron Bridgers. They live
together for 8 years.
Tennessee Williams (b.1911) has his first same-sex encounter.
Summer. Aldo Mieli, because of the Nazi threat is forced to flee France for Argentina with his
massive library.
Summer. James Lees-Milne has an affair with Stuart Preston, a wealthy New Yorker.
The manuscript of Efebos by Karol Szymanowski was lost in the German bombing
Bibliography
Ackroyd, Peter, Queer City: Gay London From the Romans to the Present Day, London: Chatto & Windus, 2017.
Aldrich, Robert, Gay Life Stories, London: Thames & Hudson, 2023.
Aldrich, Robert & Garry Wotherspoon (eds.), Who’s Who in Gay & Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II: London,
Routledge, 2001.
Bray, Alan, The Friend, University of Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Griffin, Gabriele, (ed.), Who’s Who in Lesbian & Gay Writing, Routledge: London, 2002.
Norton, Rictor, My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries, San Francisco: Leyland Publications: 1998.
Rowse, A.L., Homosexuals in History, London: Wiedenfeld & Nicholson, 1977.
Spencer, Colin, Homosexuality, a History, London: Fourth Estate, 1995.
Woods, Gregory, Homosexuality in Literature, London: Yale University Press, 1998.
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