In today’s business environment, attracting and retaining talent is a significant challenge, and it is ever more essential to have an inclusive workplace where every employee can be themselves. As a result, business leaders often ask, “How do I promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in my team? What are some team—building activities for DEI?” And often, given today’s workplace conditions, “what are some DEI activities for remote teams?”
Create an inclusive workplace by showcasing LGBTQ+ history, art and culture
In our experience, programming on LGBTQ+ history and art is an effective strategy for DEI team-building. By showcasing the hidden histories of LGBTQ+ people—their massive contributions to culture, their persecution, and the bravery they have often demonstrated—such programming provides diverse employees with new sources of Pride and their colleagues with new sources of understanding and openness. By jumpstarting conversations and breaking down unconscious bias, it helps to create an inclusive workplace and boost collaboration, innovation, and success.
A tour on LGBTQ+ Secrets at several famous monuments
I highly recommend four options. Two are tour focused on the “LGBTQ+ Secrets” of famous monuments: the Metropolitan Museum and Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. A tour of “The Secrets of the Met” takes you from ancient Greek statues (showing that same-sex love has been part of the human experience throughout history) to Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein, which opens the subject of lesbian, queer, and trans identities. The secrets of Père Lachaise takes you to the tombs of such “residents” as Oscar Wilde—both a fantastic example of LGBTQ+
Pere Lachaise Cemetery Paris Colette’s tomb
creativity and, sadly, a vital example of the persecution of LGBTQ+ people—and a series of so-called gay icons, such as Maria Callas and Edith Piaf, women with outsize talents who overcame the great difficulties of their early lives to achieve success, with whom LGBTQ+ people naturally identify but who can also serve as models of persistence and creativity for everyone in the workplace.
A virtual tour on LGBTQ+ Heroes
Two other engaging options focus on “LGBTQ+ Heroes”: a virtual tour of Greenwich Village and a presentation on LGBTQ+ resistance heroes of Nazi Europe. A Greenwich Village tour shows how the neighborhood’s tradition of diversity and inclusion led to the Stonewall riots and, thus, to many victories in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality. The WWII presentation showcases the extraordinary heroism of several LGBTQ+ people in Nazi Europe, including a Jewish gym teacher who managed to protect hundreds of Jewish children even in a death camp, and also movie star Marlene Dietrich, whose work against the Nazis won the US Medal of Honor, the French Legion d’honneur, and the Israeli Medal of Valor. By directly contradicting the traditional prejudice about LGBTQ+ people’s supposed cowardice,
First Pride March Greenwich Village 1970
this presentation helps to eliminate unconscious bias.
A highly visual activity that confronts bias to create a positive work place
Programming like this is highly visual; it contains both moments of drama and moments of humor. It confronts bias directly but (perhaps more importantly) also indirectly, by giving people memorable images and stories that contradict prejudice, reinforcing LGBTQ+ employees’ positive self-images, and opening the minds of their colleagues to the LGBTQ+ experience. By starting a conversation, it helps companies foster team bonding, create an inclusive workplace, and retain diverse talents.
Isn’t it time you saw Michelangelo’s David for yourself? Come and see 3 of Italy’s magnificent cities—Rome, Florence, and Naples—with their incredible art, their fascinating history, and of course their wonderful cuisine—and learn about their rich LGBTQ+ history that no-one else will tell you from Professor Andrew Lear and his team of specially trained guides!
Père Lachaise is Paris’ great monumental cemetery, with fabulous tombs and many famous “residents” along its charmingly shady, hilly paths (with great views of Paris!). The famous include Chopin, Bizet, and Jim Morrison—who died in Paris, probably of an overdose—but also many women and LGBTQ people. Oscar Wilde’s controversial tomb (frequently covered in lipstick kisses) is the most visited in the cemetery, but there is plenty more to see, including the tombs of Proust, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, Colette, Maria Callas and Edith Piaf.
LGBTQ+ people have been enormously important in New York City’s history—especially its cultural history. And New York City has been enormously important in LGBTQ+ history. This is probably largely due to the fact that, although New York was terribly repressive about issues of gender and sexuality through its history, it was generally less so than most other parts of the USA, so New York City served as a gathering place for LGBTQ+ people from all around the country, and to a lesser extent the world. And within New York City, there was one neighborhood known for relative freedom for LGBTQ+ people, and that was Greenwich Village, which was America’s first gayborhood, starting perhaps as early as the 1920s.
Gay artists have faced a daunting dilemma since the beginning of time: keeping their sexuality hidden or being out with their art and lives and, in doing so, risking rejection and even prosecution. This is why many gay artists, who couldn’t express themselves openly, were forced to live double lives. They created mainstream work, which they showed openly, as well as homoerotic work, which they hid, circulated just among a circle of friends, or destroyed.
You might not think there have been many LGBTQ rulers in world history. But you would be wrong! From Alexander the Great’s Macedonia to Mad Ludwig’s Bavaria and beyond, there have been rulers (and members of ruling families) with many different sexualities and gender identities throughout world history. And a number of them, unsurprisingly, have left behind fantastic palaces and castles.
At the end of this very real annus terribilis, I want to say a few words to you, our loyal readers and attendees. Above all, thanks! Thanks for keeping Oscar Wilde Tours alive by reading our blog, attending our Zoom tours, watching our YouTube videos, contributing to our fundraisers—in short, for being a fabulously loyal community. When the pandemic hit the US, in March, it seemed likely to kill the company completely. Who would have thought that 9 months later, as the pandemic continued to rage, we would be putting on our 28th Zoom tour, with audiences regularly over 100, and have gathered over 28,000 views for our videos? It’s been a hard year, but ours is a tiny, flourishing corner. And we have a lot more coming after the holidays! Want to find out more?
In a little over 100 years, between 1861 and 1967, Britain went from punishing male homosexuality with the death penalty to decriminalisation across the vast majority of the country. That may seem like a glacial pace but when we consider the World Health Organisation didn’t officially declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder until 1992, the UK seems ahead of its time. One of the easiest ways to trace the societal and legal shift in attitudes towards sexuality that took place in the UK at this time is to look at the artistic output of the nation. To see how British society went from treating artists like Oscar Wilde and Simeon Solomon as criminals, whose careers were both ruined by ‘gross indecency’ trials, to accepting and embracing artists like David Hockney and Francis Bacon as national heroes is a fascinating journey, and one on which we can all travel thanks to the work of the Tate gallery in London.
Paris is one of the world’s great LGBTQ history cities—and Père Lachaise cemetery is possibly Paris’s richest LGBTQ history site! How did it get that way? Père Lachaise was the first garden cemetery—a trend in the 19th century that led to the creation of London’s so-called Magnificent Seven, New York’s Green-wood, and Boston’s Mount Auburn. The garden cemeteries were meant as a kind of public park, and one of the attractions was to be the famous people buried there.
The founders of Père Lachaise started this off by moving some famous tombs to the new cemetery. You see one of them above. This is the tomb of the iconic romantic couple of the Middle Ages, the theologian Abélard and his abbess wife Héloïse. This idea worked out well. Père Lachaise is in fact a hugely popular tourist destination—the most visited cemetery in the world. And the attraction is its famous ‘residents’, including such luminaries as Chopin, Rossini, and Jim Morrison. LGBTQ celebrities are particularly prominent. Oscar Wilde’s tomb is the most visited in the cemetery, and other famous residents from Paris’s LGBTQ history include Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, and Colette.
One of the great things about England is its grand, historic houses, what the British call “stately homes.” Today’s post is about two castles with an LGBTQ past. And who better to write about LGBTQ England and its Queerest Stately Homes than Nick Collinson and Dan Vo? Nick is the founder of the LGBTQ working group at English Heritage, and Dan, who developed the well-known LGBTQ tours at the Victoria and Albert Museum and is now project manager of the Queer Heritage and Collections Network, a partnership of the National Trust, English Heritage, Historic England, and Historic Royal Palaces.
Nick: When I decided to form our group at English Heritage, one of the names that was suggested was ‘Stately Homos’. We decided against that name firstly because we are custodians of many other sites besides stately homes (Stonehenge, Hadrian’s Wall, Dover Castle etc…) and also we wanted to include all parts of LGBTQ England and its spectrum of genders and sexualities.
But it got me to thinking about all those homos who lived in stately homes, and all the debauchery that must have gone on in the billiard rooms, bedchambers, back stairs and butteries. Many of these homes are hundreds of years old, and the sheer number of staff they employed means that a significant number must have been interested in a bit of same-sex screwing from time to time. Unfortunately, due to the way history has been recorded, it is incredibly difficult to uncover stories about those ‘below stairs’ but the sexual goings-on of some of the more illustrious inhabitants have been recorded for posterity…
Madresfield Court: Brideshead and the Beauchamp scandal
Madresfield is one of those fairytale gothic erections, set in parkland beneath the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire. It has been in the Lygon family since the 1100’s – longer than any other dwelling in the UK, apart
Madresfield
from a few owned by the Royal Family.
The Lygons are famous in the LGBTQ community. Well, not under their real name—but they are the model for the Flyte family in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited: Sebastian, the narrator/Waugh’s big college crush was called Hugh Lygon in real life. But while the novel focuses on Sebastian’s *father’s* scandal, Waugh never mentions what the real scandal was about.
Well….William Lygon, 7th Lord Beauchamp, inherited the house in the late 1800s. He was holder of many high
Lord Beauchamp
public offices, including Governor of New South Wales in Australia. He suffered a spectacular fall from grace when he was ‘outed’ to the King by his bitter and twisted brother-in-law Hugh “Bend’or” Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster (probably because he had such a gay nickname himself!). We know Beauchamp had a penchant for good looking servants, as detailed by this tongue-in-cheek article in the Australian Star:
The most striking feature of the vice-regal ménage is the youthfulness of its members … Rosy cheeked footmen, clad in liveries of fawn, heavily ornamented in silver and red brocade, with many lanyards of the same hanging in festoons from their broad shoulders, [who] stood in the doorway, and bowed as we passed in … Lord Beauchamp deserves great credit for his taste in footmen.
While he was hosting a dinner in the medieval Great Hall at Madresfield, one of the guests was shocked when they overheard Beauchamp saying to the handsome Butler, Bradford, “Je t’adore”. The guest relayed this exchange to fellow guest Harold Nicolson (see below) in disbelief, but Nicolson, in all his bisexual wisdom, replied “Nonsense – he said ‘shut the door.’”! Always looking out for each other *wink wink nudge nudge*…
Madresfield Court is littered with little material clues to the aesthete Earl’s homosexuality, from the quartz balusters surrounding the mezzanine floor in the center of the house, to the seat covers in the library that he embroidered himself while in exile. I’m not saying that his propensity to sew and his love of shiny things is evidence enough for his being gay, but these little details add a rich timbre to the stories about him. Looking at and visiting the places where people actually lived, provide an extra dimension and tangibility to their stories. Beauchamp definitely had the Queer Eye!
Sissinghurt Castle: Queer Love Triangles in an Idyllic Garden
Dan: Great to hear Harold Nicholson would look out for a fellow indulgent queer! He was certainly one who succumbed to much temptation in his lifetime, and where better a backdrop for illicit liaisons than in a garden. I would like to conjure up in your mind a glorious and bountiful Garden of Eden, where queer sexuality was as fragrant, and flagrant, as the rich blooms. The setting is Sissinghurst Castle Garden, and it was the creation of husband and wife Harold Nicholson and author Vita Sackville-West—a couple that had a fascinatingly post-modern harmonious understanding concerning each other’s extramarital, same-sex affairs. Not that it wasn’t sometimes complicated, for example when Vita had a love affair with Harold’s sister Gwen St Aubyn. Let’s return to that shortly.
Vita called Sissinghurst her “Sleeping Beauty’s castle.” What’s remarkable is the way in which the garden was
Sissinghurst white garden
created in order to foster the many relationships that Harold and Vita had. Vita reminisced about the warm moonlit summer evenings, when love could flourish among the flowers and bushes arranged into intimate outdoor rooms and pleasant vistas. There living quarters were also divided in a similar way; the couple’s younger son Nigel (whose book Portrait of a Marriage revealed his parents’ lifestyle to the public) compared the house to a village, where everyone could live together, yet also have their own separate and private lives. Vita for instance claimed the romantic Elizabethan Tower, where she had her study, whereas Harold’s study was to be found in the South Cottage. The careful organization of the couple’s life was also seen in the movements of their lovers. Harold worked during the week in London, where he often shared his bed with a series of younger men. Vita would send her lovers, whom Harold called her béguins—infatuations—away for the weekend when Harold returned to Sissinghurst, although sometimes he arrived with another guest that his boys would dismiss as “one of Daddy’s new friends”.
Vita’s lovers included her sister-in-law Gwen St Aubyn, socialite Violet Trefusis, and most famously author Virginia Woolf, who imaginatively portrayed Vita as the gender-shifting hero/heroine of her novel Orlando. As
Vita in 1918 by William Strang
was said of the Bloomsbury group, Vita tended to “love in triangles”. The triangle between Vita, Harold, and Harold’s sister Gwen certainly illustrates the unique marriage arrangement between Vita and Harold. Another significant and perhaps even more complicated love triangle was the one between Vita, Violet, and Virginia. Violet fell in love with Vita while they were still teenagers, and while both married, the relationship almost broke up both marriages. Vita even interrupted Violet’s honeymoon to demand Violet sleep with her, and some accounts indicate Violet had given exclusive sexual rights to Vita alone! Harold was unusually perturbed and put his foot down and (having flown to France in a two-seater with Violet’s husband to recover Vita) demanded an end to the relationship. While her affair with Virginia occurred later, the ghost remained, and Virginia acknowledged this in Orlando by having Violet appear as Princess Sasha, the object of Orlando’s deepest affection.
Orlando is set in (a fictional version) of another nearby stately home Vita’s childhood and ancestral home, Knole, but it is at Sissinghurst—and especially in the garden—that one finds the essence of Vita’s (and Harold’s) amazing take on sexuality and relationships, making it one of the greatest Stately Homes in LGBTQ England.
