Hey, this is Ben here to let you know that today's episode contains discussions of childhood sexual abuse.

If that is not something you want to hear discussions of, today's episode is not the one for you.

For everyone else, it's a great episode. Please enjoy. Good evening, everybody.

Good evening. Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Bad Gaze Live from

Guildhall and Bath. Thank you so much for being here. I'm Ben Miller. I'm a writer and researcher,

currently at work on a biography of the fashion designer Rudy Gernerick. And I'm Hugh Lemmy, a writer and

artist. And we're so happy to be here at

Guildhall and Bath. Thanks so much to Queer Bath for having us. Thanks so much to Nick Yavchichs for

hosting us and jazz and everybody else who's been so wonderful here. And thank you all so much

for coming. So ordinarily, this is the time when I would say who we talked about last week, but there

wasn't a last week.

But Hugh, who are we talking about this week?

I do feel a little bit like I'm bringing Colston, Newcastle, by talking about William Beckford

here in Bath.

And I'm sure that many of you here will, his presence will be well understood to you, because

his legacy is left, like his vast collections of art,

and his tower, Beckford's tower, his beautiful building he had built as a retreat from the city.

But his material legacy is actually probably a good place to discuss a man who was decidedly both evil and very complicated queer from history.

And that's because William Beckford, who was born not in Bath, but in London in 1760,

is someone for human property in every sense of the word

was really the defining factor of his life.

He was a novelist, a member of parliament,

...