Before we start, please be aware that today's show contains frank discussions of childhood sexual abuse, and as such, listener discretion is advised.

Hello and welcome to episode 8 of Bad Gays, a podcast where we uncover the dark side of gay men in history.

I'm Hugh Lemmy, a writer and novelist.

And I'm Ben Miller, a writer, gay historian and member of the board of the Gay Museum in Berlin.

And each episode, we profile a different gay villain from history, looking at their life in context and how their sexuality informed their infamy.

We want to complicate gay history by talking about evil people and complicated people instead of just heroes.

We're focusing on cis men because cis men are definitionally the most bad,

and we're asking why we don't remember our villains as well as

our heroes. So last week we talked about a Weimar-era gay magazine publisher who provided space

for lesbians and trans people to express themselves, but also ended up writing favorably about

fascists. Who are we talking about this week, Hugh? One thing that's been noticeable in this series so

far, especially of our British subjects,

such as T. Lawrence and Anthony Blunt, is that the vectors and valences of sexuality of our subjects

really clearly flavoured by a whole body of assumptions about class and behaviour.

Today's subject is fascinating for me for the way his life crossed class society at a time

where a lot of those assumptions were being broken down,

and when Britain was changing from a very rigid class-based society, to a society which was really rethinking its attitudes,

both towards homosexuality and towards class.

In fact, he really encapsulates many of the most important aspects of the 1950s and 60s, and as a result, he's

become a sort of icon of that area in England, although in a way that really diminishes the severity

of his crimes. And that's telling in itself as he's become the icon of that era which the British

have deeply romanticised as a golden age to avoid really examining what lies behind the myths of

...