Gay UK: Love, Life and Liberty
There was a good
section on life before the Act and the events which were starting to lead to it
including the Oscar Wilde trail and the Wolfenden report. I was delighted to
see a lot of material from the Bloomsbury Group including a touching recording
of Vita Sackville-West reading a letter to her from the author Virginia Woolf
explaining that her book Orlando is based on Vita and grew out of their
relationship. I’d not realised before that Orlando was published in the same
year as “The Well of Loneliness” which was banned.
There was a
touching section on prosecutions including a photograph of John Gielgud in the
play he was in at the time of his arrest. He had been frightened of appearing
but the audience cheered him at the end.
The show was
strong on how literature and popular culture have influenced and reflected
change. I was amused by a display of framed single covers from the 1980s which
could have come from my singles box. It also traced political movements with
fascinating ephemera which had been kept including a copy of the Gay Manifesto
from 1971 and a programme from the first London Pride event in 1979.
The last section
looked at where we are now and included a nice video of interviews. There was
also a lovely juxtaposition of a Hello magazine with Elton John, David Furnish
and their children on the cover and the Attitude magazine with Prince William
on its cover.
Closes on 19
September 2017
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