Nottingham's a Real Drag!

Think about drag in the UK and you don’t usually think about Nottingham - Manchester and London, yes, but Nottingham? Actually there’s quite a lot of drag history in the city.

First of all there’s Douglas Byng who was born in the Nottingham suburbs. I mentioned him over the Christmas period as my 3^rd Gay of Christmas. But a more famous theatrical cross-dresser was the legendary Music Hall performer Vesta Tilley (1864-1952).

Vesta Tilley began her stage career at the age of 4 in her father’s theatre in Nottingham (now demolished; a large pedestrian crossing currently occupies the site). Cross-dressing, even on stage, was still frowned upon in her early days, and Vesta’s first male impersonation act in 1872 had to be “toned down” because the theatre manager considered it too realistic.

Vesta took a new approach to male impersonation. Instead of appearing as a woman pretending to be a man, she wanted to be seen as a man not a woman. To this end she didn’t wear specially-made men’s suits but actual men’s suits from the shops. This style was new for a woman and it proved popular, especially in the emerging lesbian literary community, even though Vesta herself was undoubtedly straight. It wasn’t long before lesbians were wearing real men’s clothes in public more often.

The year before Vesta Tilley performed her first drag act another one ended up in court. Ernest Boulton was the boyfriend of Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton, MP for Newark, and member of the family who owned Nottingham Castle. Boulton performed in drag in stage plays but also often appeared in public in drag. He often introduced himself as Lady Stella Clinton and wore a wedding ring Lord Arthur had given him. In 1870 Boulton was arrested and put on trial for “masquerading” and, after love letters from Lord Arthur were found, “sodomy”. The trial caused a sensation. However, Lord Arthur was called to testify against his partner. To avoid embarrassment to Boulton and out of fear of his private life being disclosed Lord Arthur committed suicide the day after he received his summons to appear. Boulton was found not guilty, the general feeling at the time being given that cross-dressing in public was gradually acceptable.

One of the earliest definitive publications on drag was “Drag: A History of Female Impersonation on the Stage” (1968) by Roger Baker. He was born in Nottinghamshire, studied at Nottingham University, and worked for several local newspapers before moving to London at the start of the gay movement in the 1960s to be a journalist.

Also during the 60s the Gay Liberation Front advocated “Radical Drag”, the use of drag in public in relation to protest. Another Nottingham University student, Kris Kirk, was an active supporter of Radical Drag. He also appeared as Maid Marian in a gay street theatre performance of Robin Hood. He too later moved to London and became a journalist. With his partner Ed Heath Kris produced another definitive book of drag in 1984 called “Men in Frocks”.

My own connection with drag comes in several ways. First, I’ve always taken part in amateur theatre since I was a child – it’s in my blood. So I’ve dragged up a few times for pantos and review. My “Uncle” Will Hayes (photo) was a semi-professional entertainer and for many years appeared in many pantos. This photo is of him in one of his favourite costumes. More recently, one of my partners was a drag performer.

Olympic Countdown

Since this article first appeared a lot of new information has been revealed and new research has been carried out. This article should be seen as a mere snapshot of the information known at the date of its publication. Several facts may now be outdated or inaccurate.



The first modern revival of the Olympics by the Greeks themselves came in 1859. They were the brainchild of businessman Evangelis Zappas who also funded them. Zappas based the games in the Greek capital, and since then the Olympics have been associated with Athens more than Olympia.

Two further Olympics were funded by Zappas and these are now called the Zappas Olympics. The 1870 and 1875 games was based at the Panathinaiko Stadium. This was the same stadium that was used in ancient times during the Great Panathenean Games – what I call the Gayest Games in Ancient Greece. This stadium was enlarged and rebuilt in 140 AD by Herodes Atticus.

Herodes Atticus rebuilt many public buildings. His young lover, Polydeukes, was an athlete who may have attended both the Olympics and the Great Panathanean. However, Polydeukes died young and Herodes organised a massive funeral sports festival for the boy at his recently rebuilt Panathinaiko Stadium. Herodes was so heart-broken that he himself died soon afterwards and his own funeral was also held there.

The Zappas Olympics are not recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), even though it benefited from the financial input to Greek sport from Zappas himself. Their excuse is that the Zappas Games were a primarily Greek affair. But the 1856 Cotswold Games were a primarily English games, yet the IOC recognise them as a founding influence.

The official modern Olympics were founded in 1896, founded by Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Once again, the Panathenaiko Stadium was to play a large part in the event. The IOC soon decided to hold games in between the main ones, like the Winter Games have been recently. And so the Intercalated Olympics were formed.

The 1^st Intercalated Games were in 1906 in Athens and were again based around the Panathinaiko Stadium. De Coubertin objected to them being held in Greece. He was a snob and did everything he could to prevent Greece from hosting the Olympics ever again. The Paris 1900 and St. Louis 1904 Olympics weren’t very successful, but the 1906 Intercalated Athens Olympics were a huge international hit. De Coubertin wasn’t happy! However, Greek politics and World War I prevented any further Intercalated Games from being held, and it wasn’t until 2004 that the Panathinaiko Stadium was used again at the Olympics.

Such was de Coubertin’s influence and snobbery against Greece that all medals and world records from the 1906 Intercalated Athens Olympics were deleted from IOC records. This is in spite of the fact that they were the first we would recognise today, with the first ever opening and closing ceremonies and the athletes’ parade into the stadium behind national (i.e. political) flags.

The earliest possible known gay Olympian could easily have been the Danish gymnast Niels Bukh at the 1908 London games. He had trained for the games but, unfortunately, body-fascism raised its ugly head when he wasn’t selected for his team because he was too “thick-set” (too muscular?) and didn’t fit in with the uniform look of the rest of the team! Ironically, fascism was to play an even greater part in his later life.

Determined to turn Olympic setback to his advantage Bukh changed the style of gymnastics for ever. He became a trainer and opened many gyms which taught new methods which he developed. More intensive weight-training was introduced, stretching techniques, and something which was unheard of – bodily contact. Gymnasts worked in pairs, doing resistance exercises with each other. Other gyms using his techniques opened across Europe. It seems ironic that the techniques developed by this gay man, who was turned on by young muscular male bodies, turned out so many straight young muscular male bodies.

During the 1920s and 30s Bukh’s gyms and training techniques became very popular and successful globally. But a dark cloud was beginning to gather over the continent and Niels Bukh began to move across to what became the “wrong side”. I’ll return to Niels Bukh on 27^th January when I’ll describe the opposing influences on sport and the modern Olympics.

US Drag History Month

This month the American media entertainment network Logo is celebrating National Drag History Month. This is their 3^rd celebration of drag in all its glittering, camp forms. Although it isn’t “official” in the same way that LGBT History Month or Black History month is, I think it’s a great idea and should be celebrated internationally.

It fits in very well with events in the UK at this time of year because we’re well into panto season with Dames and Principal Boys strutting across hundreds of stages all over the country. What better way to celebrate.

But drag and cross-dressing developed out of something totally different to the stage – religion. Male priests and shamans in ancient times would dress as women to act as “wives” to the deity they worshipped. In a way theatre derives from this religious “acting”, and directly as a result of this women were banned from the stage until well into the 2^nd millennium. The Ancient Greek even had a cross-dressing god, Dionysius (a god I mentioned in November in relation to the constellation Sagittarius) as the patron of theatre and transvestites.

The development from these ancient cross-dressing priests into the modern drag kings and queens is very long and complicated, so I won’t go into it now. But there’s a danger that some confusion could arise, because not all cross-dressing activity can be called drag. To many people drag conjures up images of camp, often outrageous, personalities like Lily Savage.

This type of drag is the main focus for celebration by the Logo channel and hopefully it will help dispel some of the prejudices and misconceptions about drag performers, as well as highlight its many different forms – from pantomime (Widow Twankey, etc.) to cabaret (RuPaul, Danny La Rue), from traditional musical performance (Hinge and Bracket, Douglas Byng) to public drag persona (Divine), the drag community is as varied as any other and there’s a lot to celebrate.

I’ll be posting a couple more entries on drag history over the next couple of weeks, including some of my own connections to drag.

Olympic Countdown

Since this article first appeared a lot of new information has been revealed and new research has been carried out. This article should be seen as a mere snapshot of the information known at the date of its publication. Several facts may now be outdated or inaccurate.



In 200 days time the (second) biggest (behind the Gay Games) sporting show on earth comes to the UK – the 2012 London Olympics. It’s also a special year for the UK because World Pride takes place in London in June and its also the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Perhaps its appropriate that the Olympics are in the UK this year because it also marks the 400^th anniversary of the first Olympic games in Great Britain. Yes, I said 400^th anniversary.

The Great Britain Olympic Committee recognises the Cotswold Olimpycks, first recorded in 1612, as the prelude to the British Olympic movement and they emphasised this in its bid for the 2012 Olympics. The name “Olimpyck” was first used for the Cotswold games in 1636.

The Cotswold Olimpycks were organised by Robert Dover (I wonder if he’s an ancestor of the present Robert Dover, who has competed in more Olympics than any other lgbt athlete). Events included horse riding, wrestling, running, dancing and chess, making them more like the modern Gay Games than the modern Olympics.

The games were supported by our old friend James I of Great Britain - “Queen” James – who donated a ceremonial costume for Robert Dover to wear at the games. James I was a big fan of sport, writing in 1599 that “certain days in the year would be appointed for delighting the people with public spectacles of all honest games”. In 1617 he wrote “The Book of Sports”, listing sports permitted on Sundays and Holy Days.

Unfortunately, the rise of Puritanism and its opposition to enjoyment made the Cotswold Olimpycks increasingly unpopular. Eventually, in 1642, the Puritans established a republic and banned games and celebrations of all kinds (including Christmas). The Olimpycks stopped.

An attempt at a revival occurred in the 1660s, but over the years it deteriorated into an unruly, often drunken, free-for-all. The most recent successful revival of the Cotswold Olimpycks was in 1951 for the Festival of Britain. The games are still held every year during Spring Bank Holiday weekend.

The present International Olympic Committee acknowledges that their origins were influenced by England’s other, more famous, Stoke Mandeville games and the Wenlock Olympics (Mandeville and Wenlock are the names of the official 2012 mascots). But there was another Olympic revival in Athens in the same year as the first Wenlock Olympics that was air-brushed out of the Olympic movement by the IOC. I’ll tell you about that in 5 days time, and how echoes of the “Gayest Games in Ancient Greece” had a role in the Olympic movement.

The 12 Gays of Christmas

King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1886)

Last month I mentioned that Hans Christian Andersen (my 4^th Gay of Christmas) said his life was a fairy tale. For King Ludwig II von Wittelsbach of Bavaria that meant building several fairy tale castles to go with it.

Think about Disneyland in Florida and you probably picture the fairy tale castle. The castle, featured in the film “Sleeping Beauty”, was based on that of Schloss Neuchwanstein in Bavaria (pictured). The actual castle itself featured in another great fantasy film, “Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang”.

Ludwig has gone down in history as the “Mad King of Bavaria”. This is an unfair reputation because it was a political criticism of his eccentricities rather than a medical diagnosis. In fact, Ludwig’s eccentricities helped to create a German identity when Germany was still made up of competing kingdoms and hundreds of principalities with nothing to unify them.

Ludwig grew up when the Romantic movement was at its height. At the time Germany was searching for some cultural heritage which all the German-speaking nations could unite behind to beat back threats from more powerful nations like Russia, France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This led to the creation of a German “brand”. It was the catalyst for Wagner’s music and for the Grimm Brothers collecting folk tales. Combine the 2 and you get Ludwig’s great passions.

As soon as he became king in 1864 Ludwig invited Wagner to Bavaria and commissioned several new operas from him. The fairy tale castles featured in the Grimm Brothers’ tales inspired Ludwig’s style of art and architecture. His first “fairy tale” castle was Schloss Neuchwanstein, and he built several others, all in the new (if exaggerated) gothic style. The interiors of these were also often in fantastic style, with secret passages to underground grottos, etc.

These grottos were often places where Ludwig invited handsome soldiers and stable boys to join him in late night parties.

Ludwig’s diary reveals the struggles he had with his homosexuality, something which fellow gay Catholics sometimes experience even today. The most important romantic relationship he had was with Prince Paul von Thurn und Taxis.

King Ludwig died in mysterious circumstances. He was found drowned in Lake Starnberg next to Castle Berg. Rumours spread that he was either murdered or committed suicide. We may never know the truth.

His legacy was the fostering of a Romantic German image which survives today. His Bavarian fantasies, enhanced by Wagner’s music, is, perhaps, our most stereotypical image of traditional German heritage.

The 12 Gays of Christmas

King Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712-1786)

Christmas presents come in all shapes and sizes, from your favourite chocolate to a fleet of Porsche. But what one gay man got for Christmas in 1745 was an entire country.

Frederick II von Hohenzollern, King of Prussia, is one of the most important founders of the Germany empire. A fortunate chain of events began in the year he became king which led to Frederick earning his name “the Great”: the Austrian Emperor died leaving his daughter Maria Teresa as his heir, but most of the empire’s territories barred women from succession. So the power of Austrian empire, already in a state of stagnation, was weak enough to challenge.

Frederick took the opportunity to invade the province of Silesia. He hoped Maria Teresa would give in and cede Silesia to Prussia in return for his support in her fight to become empress. She refused. War was inevitable – the War of the Austrian Succession.

From this map you will see how important some of the following countries were to Frederick.

Frederick next invaded Moravia, and the ensuing conflict led to Maria Teresa at last ceding most of Silesia to him. Frederick then invaded Bohemia, but by this time, 4 years after the war started, Maria Teresa had a stronger army with support from the joint kingdom of Poland and Saxony and they began to attack Prussian troops in Silesia from both sides, threatening to cut it off from Prussia. In response Frederick invaded Saxony.

It was on Christmas Day that year, 1745, that the Treaty of Dresden was signed. This stopped hostilities in Saxony (for the time being) as Frederick agreed to pull out the country in exchange for his undisputed right to Silesia. It was a Christmas that put Frederick the Great into the most superior political position on the continent as the other leaders carried on fighting each other.

Frederick the Great returned to Berlin in triumph. But it was a triumph tinged with sadness. During Frederick’s absence in the war in Saxony his greatest friend (and probable lover) Count von Keyserling, died.

One of Frederick’s earliest lover’s was the handsome young Lt. Hans Hermann von Katte. The two plotted to run away together to escape the abusive and humiliating treatment Frederick received from his father. The two were captured and Katte was executed by Frederick’s father.

Among Frederick’s other lovers was Count Francesco Algarotti, and a man who will get another mention next month in relation to a female English aristocrat.

What resulted from Frederick’s success in Silesia at Christmas 1745 was the foundation of Prussia as a major power around which the future German Empire would grow.

The 12 Gays of Christmas

Kristina of Sweden (1626-1689)

For the final 3 Gays of Christmas I want to return to the Nativity story. As well as the angel Gabriel other essential characters in any school nativity play are the Three Kings. Mentioned in the Bible as an unspecified number of Wise Men (there could have been 2, there could have been 20). The traditional “Three Kings” originate in Medieval times. So, for the last 3 Gays I’ll present 3 kings with festive connections.

Two significant events took place at Christmas in 1654 and 1655. Significant, that is, for my 10^th Gay of Christmas – King Kristina of Sweden. Her title of “King” was not a nickname. In Sweden all reigning monarchs are called “king” irrespective of their gender, though Kristina displayed a certain cross-gender behaviour that has placed her firmly in the lgbt community.

Even at her birth Kristina was subjected to speculation. Her lusty cries made those hearing them think she was a robust healthy boy. But it was clear Kristina was a girl. However, her father King Gustav Adolf treated her like a boy as much as possible, giving her a typical boy’s education and coaching her as his successor.

Her succession happened sooner rather than later. Scarcely after her education had begun Kristina’s father was killed in battle and she became King of Sweden at the age of 6. An intelligent and inquisitive teenager she impressed the Regents and State Council who had no worries about her ruling in her own right as king from her 18^th birthday.

Kristina reigned well and wisely for 22 years and stunned everyone by abdicating at the age of 27 in 1654. She left Sweden and travelled around Europe under the guise of “Count Dohna”. On Christmas Eve 1654 she converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism. The pope considered her a “prize conversion” and welcomed Kristina to Rome in 1655 where they attended Holy Mass on 25^th December. Kristina spent the rest of her life in Rome.

Kristina was often regarded as mannish in appearance and attire. She dismissed all ideas of marriage to secure the succession. The French referred to her as an Amazon because of her mannish style.

One clear relationship Kristina had was with a female courtier called Ebba Sparre. They were known to have shared a bed. I am wary to use the phrase “slept together” because it means something different, though there was an obvious love between them as is shown in the letters Kristina wrote to Ebba after she left Sweden.

The enigmatic nature of Kristina’s sexuality lingers over 400 years after her death. The famous film of 1933 in which the equally enigmatic Swede Greta Garbo played Kristina didn’t shy away from portraying Kristina in an honest manner. As much as anything else, the film only enhanced King Krstina’s place in lgbt history.