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Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

Until recently, the history of sex between men was taboo.

But by delving into the historical archive, Sir Noel Malcolm has uncovered a much more complex story of same-sex relationships and encounters in early modern Europe and the Ottoman world.

Rebecca Franks spoke to him to find out more, and please be aware that the conversation touches on sensitive subjects surrounding sex. Welcome to the History Extra podcast, and thank you

for joining me. Your new book, Forbidden Desire in early modern Europe explores same-sex

relationships between men across the centuries from

1400 to 1750. This period of history is very much your specialism, but could you

briefly tell us what your starting point was for researching this particular area?

Yes, I think not for the first time in my career as a historian. I've sort of stumbled into a subject

by accident. I was working in the state archives in Venice, and I was working my way through the

reports from the Venetian ambassador in Istanbul. A lot of it is gossip about Ottoman politics and so on and administrative questions.

But in one of these reports, there was an extraordinary, quite thick dossier, which I started reading.

And I gradually realized what it was about. There was slightly coded language, but after a while I realized this is a detailed investigation into what we would call a gay

sexual scandal inside the embassy between a junior embassy employee who was the barber he'd

probably just done his apprenticeship was probably about 1819 had come to be the resident barber in the embassy, and a slightly

...