Robin Maugham

Robin Maugham born 17 May 1916 (d. 1981)

Robin Maugham was an author of short stories, novels, non-fiction, plays, and screenplays; an officer in World War II; a barrister-at-law; and 2nd Viscount Maugham of Hartfield. His success was not without struggle. In the preface to his first autobiography Escape from the Shadows Maugham describes the three shadows of his life: his uncle William Somerset Maugham, his father Viscount Frederic Herbert Maugham, and the guilt he experienced due to the 'strict upper-middle class moral convictions' that declared his homosexual desires to be perverse.

Robin Maugham was born Robert Cecil Romer Maugham. Maugham described his childhood as lonely, with the exception of an imaginary friend, Tommy. Throughout his autobiographical works, Maugham speaks frankly about the troubles he experienced because of his attraction to men.

He spent most of his youth in boarding schools, beginning with Highfield School, Eton, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Both sides of his family practiced law, and Maugham was urged to follow the family tradition. His interest in law was less than enthusiastic; he found writing, painting, and music more pleasurable. He left Cambridge in 1937, signed up for the Inns of Court Regiment and became a judge's marshal. In April 1939, Maugham became the private secretary to the Director of the National Service Campaign. As part of this assignment, Maugham worked with Winston Churchill, creating a relationship that lasted until just before Churchill's death. When war was declared in September 1939, Maugham entered as a trooper in the Inns of Court Regiment.

Maugham served in World War 2 from 1939 to 1945, first with the 8th Army in North Africa and later with the Middle East Intelligence Centre. During a 1942 battle he was hit in the head with a shell fragment. This caused him to have blackouts, but the severity was never enough to have the shrapnel removed. However, due to this injury he was released from duty in 1945 and was unable to resume his law practice.

Maugham's short story, The 1946 Ms, had been published by the War Facts Press in 1943 and was his first published work. Convoy, a journal bridging the gap between military and civilian life during World War II, was created by and edited by Maugham for seven issues beginning in 1944. When his father died in 1958, Maugham became the 2nd Viscount Maugham of Hartfield. In 1960 he gained a seat in the House of Lords.

After his first published work in 1943, Maugham wrote novels, short stories, plays, travel books, dramatic works, a biography of his family, two autobiographies, and film scripts. His writing has been compared to that of his uncle in their use of 'exotic locales', though Robin is much more frank in his writing regarding sexuality and sexual guilt, particularly in his first autobiography. Writer, editor, and journalist Peter Burton met Maugham in 1968 and helped with the revision and rewriting of several novels, as well as several articles and reviews. Burton worked as a writer and editor for Gay News from 1972 to 1982. During this time, he also worked with Maugham on many projects and compiled Maugham's bibliography. Burton discusses the many aspects of their relationship in Parallel Lives.

Maugham was also assisted in his writing by his partner William Lawrence, who worked as his personal assistant for the last 11 years of his life, and is the copyright holder of Robin Maugham's estate.

Maugham's best known work is probably The Servant, which was notably adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter and directed by Joseph Losey in 1963. The film starred James Fox, Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles and Wendy Craig.

By 1981, Maugham's health had deteriorated. Diabetes and his abuse of alcohol, in addition to other physical problems, ended his life two months shy of his 65th birthday, on March 13, 1981.

Jimmy Edwards

Jimmy Edwards born 23 March 1920 (d. 1988)

Jimmy Edwards was an English radio and television comedy actor, best known as Pa Glum in Take It From Here and as the headmaster 'Professor' James Edwards in Whack-O!

Born James Keith O'Neill in Barnes, London, he went to King's College School in Wimbledon, London. He served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross. His Dakota was shot down at Arnhem in 1944, resulting in injuries requiring plastic surgery — he disguised it with the huge handlebar moustache that later became his trademark. He was a member of the Guinea Pig Club.

Edwards was a feature of London theatre in the immediate post-War years, including a season with Tony Hancock, having previously performed in the Cambridge Footlights review. He gained wider exposure as a radio performer in Take It From Here, co-starring Dick Bentley, which first paired his writer Frank Muir with Bentley's: Denis Norden.

Graduating to television, he appeared in Whack-O!, also written by Muir and Norden, the panel game Does the Team Think?, The Seven Faces of Jim, as well as guest slots in Make Room for Daddy and Sykes. Edwards also worked with Eric Sykes when he acted in the Sykes-penned short films The Plank (1967) (alongside Tommy Cooper), and in the remake of the film (The Plank (1979 — alongside Arthur Lowe), as well as in Rhubarb (1969) (which also featured Harry Secombe). Edwards and Sykes also toured in their theatrical farce Big Bad Mouse, which while keeping more or less to a script, gave them rein to ad lib, address the audience and so forth.

He published his autobiography, Six of the Best, in 1984, as a follow up to the earlier Take it From Me. Amongst his outside interests were brass bands - he played the tuba and the euphonium - and the Handlebar Club, in which all the members had such moustaches.

Edwards was a lifelong Conservative and in the 1964 general election stood as a candidate for them in Paddington North, without success. He was also a devotee of fox hunting, a pursuit he followed at Rottingdean, near Brighton - a Brighton and Hove bus is named after him.

Having been previously married, during the 1970s he also came out as a homosexual, and consequently found TV work harder to come by in what were more homophobic times.

His spent much of his life in East Sussex and he died in London in 1988 at the age of 68 from pneumonia.

Sir Richard Burton

Sir Richard Burton born 19 March 1821 (d. 1890)

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was an English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke twenty-nine European, Asian, and African languages.

Burton's best-known achievements include travelling in disguise to Mecca, making an unexpurgated translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (the collection is more commonly called The Arabian Nights in English) and the Kama Sutra and journeying with John Hanning Speke to discover the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile. He was a prolific author and wrote numerous books and scholarly articles about subjects including travel, fencing and ethnography.

He was a captain in the army of the East India Company serving in India (and later, briefly, in the Crimean War). Following this he was engaged by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the east coast of Africa and led an expedition which discovered Lake Tanganyika. In later life he served as British consul in Fernando Po, Damascus and, finally, Trieste. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was awarded a knighthood (KCMG) in 1886. Burton was considered a controversial figure in his day and, while some considered him a hero, others considered him a scoundrel.

Firstly, in a society where sexual repression was the norm, Burton's writing was unusually open and frank about his interest in sex and sexuality. His travel writing is often full of details about the sexual lives of the inhabitants of areas he travelled through and many of these details would have been shocking to the average Victorian. Burton's interest in sexuality led him to make measurements of the penis lengths of the inhabitants of various regions, which he includes in his travel books. He also describes sexual techniques common in the regions he visited, often hinting that he had participated, hence breaking both sexual and racial taboos of his day.

Allegations of homosexuality 'dogged' Burton throughout most of his life, a particularly serious accusation as it was a criminal offence in Victorian England. Biographers disagree on whether or not Burton ever experienced homosexual sex (he never directly admits to it in his writing but he would hardly be expected to). These allegations began in his army days when General Sir Charles James Napier requested that Burton go undercover to investigate a male brothel reputed to be frequented by British soldiers. It has been suggested that Burton's detailed report on the workings of the brothel may have led some to believe he had been a customer. His later writings on the subject of pederasty and the fact that he and his wife, Isabel, remained childless gave further ground for speculation.

Burton was a heavy drinker at various times in his life and also admitted to taking both hemp and opium. Friends of the poet Algernon Swinburne blamed Burton for leading him astray, holding Burton responsible for Swinburne's alcoholism and interest in the works of the Marquis de Sade.

He died after suffering a heart attack in Trieste in 1890. His wife ordered a marble monument for him shaped like a tent, in which he had spent so much of his life.

Sir Richard F Burton - glbtq encyclopedia

Dudley Cave

Dudley Cave born 19 February 1921 (d. 1999)

Dudley Cave was a British former soldier and pioneering gay rights activist.

He joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in 1941, aged 20, and was posted to the Far East. He was captured by the Japanese when Singapore fell in 1942 and was marched north to work on the Thai-Burma railway, 10 miles beyond the bridge on the River Kwai. He caught malaria and was imprisoned in Changi Prison in Singapore because he was unproductive. This may have saved his life. Three quarters of his company perished.

When back in Britain he had a job as manager of the Majestic Cinema, Wembley, but in 1954 he was sacked when it was discovered that he was gay.

Also in 1954 he met Bernard Williams, an RAF veteran and school teacher, and they became lovers and co-campaigners for 40 years until Bernard Williams died in 1994.

In 1971 Dudley Cave joined the Unitarian Church and helped in securing the ordination of lesbians and gay men. He also conducted same-sex weddings.

In 1974 he was on the launch committee of the London Gay Switchboard, and he was still answering the telephone right up to his death 25 years later.

He and his partner, Bernard Williams, founded the Lesbian and Gay Bereavement Project in 1980, and they ran its telephone helpline for many years. After a battle with the Charity Commissioners this became the first organisation with 'gay' in its title to be given charitable status.

In the 1980s he worked on reconciliation with the Japanese and travelled a number of times to Japan to speak on the subject.

In November, 1998 he was OutRage!'s keynote speaker at its Queer Remembrance Day vigil at the Cenotaph where he layed a pink triangle wreath honouring gay people who died fighting Nazism and in the concentration camps.

Dudley Cave dedicated most of his life to challenging and fighting prejudice and seeking justice and equality for gay people especially in the areas of military recognition and issues of bereavement for gay people of all ages; he did so with great eloquence, dignity and integrity.

Leonard Matlovich

Leonard Matlovich born 6 July 1943 (d. 1988)

Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich was a Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He fought the US military in 1975 for the right to serve as an openly gay man.

Born in Savannah, Georgia, he was the only son of a career Air Force sergeant. He spent his childhood living on military bases, primarily throughout the southern United States. Matlovich and his sister were raised in the Roman Catholic Church. By his own admission, by the time he was in his late teens, he had become a 'white racist', and a 'flag-waving patriot'. Not long after he enlisted, the United States increased military action in Vietnam. Matlovich volunteered for service in Vietnam and served three tours of duty. He was seriously wounded when he stepped on a land mine in Da Nang.

While stationed in Florida near Fort Walton Beach, he began frequenting gay bars in nearby Pensacola. He came out to his friends, but continued to conceal the fact from his commanding officer. Matlovich gradually came to believe that the discrimination faced by African Americans was similar to the persecution that homosexuals endured; it became a civil rights issue. When he was 30, Matlovich slept with another man for the first time. Unwilling to put his career on the line in the early 1970s, he would sometimes refer to himself as a 'minority' hinting at his new lifestyle. He taught race relations classes in the period of 1972-75.

It was not until he was assigned to Langley AFB in 1975 that he felt confident enough to tell his military superiors that he was gay - forcing their response. After reading a letter authored by Matlovich that declared his homosexuality, his immediate superior officer asked, 'What does this mean?' Matlovich replied, 'It means Brown versus the Board of Education' - a reference to the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case outlawing racial segregation in public schools. For Matlovich, his test of the military's sexual orientation tolerance would be equivalent to that case. Despite his exemplary military record, tours of duty in Vietnam, and high performance evaluations, a military panel deemed Matlovich unfit for service and he was discharged from the Air Force six months after his declaration.

He sued for reinstatement, but the legal process was a long one and by the time the case was resolved, his goals and objectives had changed. When a government attorney offered to permit Matlovich to return to Air Force duty provided he would sign a document pledging to 'never practice homosexuality again', Matlovich declined. Although he lost his initial bid to stay in the Air Force, a federal judge eventually ordered his reinstatement with retroactive back pay. In 1980, Matlovich agreed to settle the case without returning to the Air Force, but did win an upgraded honourable discharge and a cash settlement of $160,000.

A converted Mormon and church elder when he lived in Hampton, Virginia, Matlovich found himself at odds with the Latter Day Saints and their conservative ideology and he was twice excommunicated by the LDS church for being homosexual. He was first excommunicated on October 7, 1975 in Norfolk, Virginia, and then again January 17, 1979 after his appearance on the Phil Donahue television show in 1978, without being rebaptised.

Perhaps the most painful aspect of the whole experience for Matlovich was his revelation to his parents. He told his mother by telephone. She was so stunned she refused to tell Matlovich's father. Her first reaction was that God was punishing her for something she had done, even if her Roman Catholic faith would have not sanctioned that notion. Then, she imagined that her son had not prayed enough or had not seen enough psychiatrists. She later admitted that she had suspected the truth for a long time. When his father finally found out by reading it in the newspaper, Matlovich recalled, 'He cried for about two hours.' After that, he told his wife that, 'If he can take it, I can take it.'

Once fully committed to openly gay civilian life, Matlovich moved to California ending up eventually in San Francisco, the centre of the gay community in the US, and became an outspoken advocate of gay rights. Matlovich, however, gradually became disenchanted with being the lighting rod for gay activist causes. His personal and financial situation had deteriorated between 1975 and 1980 and his inherently conservative, religious leanings were often at odds with the flamboyant leaders of the gay movement, both in San Francisco and nationwide. At one point he moved from San Francisco to the Russian River area of northern California where he used the proceeds of his settlement to open a pizza restaurant. While continuing to be active in gay causes, he became increasingly less visible in terms of a symbol of the gay movement.

With the outbreak of HIV/AIDS in the US in the early 1980s, Leonard’s personal life was caught up in the virus’ hysteria that peaked in the 1980s. In the northern California town of Guerneville, he was forced to close down his newly opened pizza parlor when his heterosexual friends and clientèle abandoned him out of fear and a lack of understanding about the propagation of the disease. He returned to San Francisco to sell used cars, and eventually ended up at a Ford dealership.

During the summer of 1986, Matlovich felt fatigued, then contracted a prolonged chest cold he seemed unable to shake. When he finally saw a physician in September of that year, he was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Too weak to continue his work at the Ford dealership, he was among the first to receive AZT treatments, but his prognosis was not encouraging. He became a champion for HIV/AIDS research for the disease which was claiming tens of thousands of lives in the Bay Area and nationally. He announced that he had contracted the HIV virus in 1987 on Good Morning America.

On June 22, 1988, just a month before his 45th birthday, Matlovich died of complications from HIV/AIDS.

His tombstone reads:

When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.

Matlovich's tombstone is on the same row at Congressional Cemetery as J. Edgar Hoover's.

Horatio Herbert (Lord) Kitchener

Horatio Herbert (Lord) Kitchener born 24 June 1850 (d. 1916)

He never married and appreciated porcelain, fine fabrics and interior decor, but it is disputed whether Horatio Kitchener was gay or was just more interested in empire than the opposite sex.

The hero of Sudan and the Boer war, whose portrait encouraged millions to enlist for the first world war, has been declared gay by several historians. Little was known about his sexual preferences, although a contemporary journalist remarked that Kitchener 'has the failing acquired by most of the Egyptian officers, a taste for buggery'. Source: The Guardian

Great moustache, great poster. His death in 1916 - the ship he was travelling on HMS Hampshire struck a mine near Scapa Flow on a diplomatic mission to Russia - was a momentous event to World War I Britain.

Naturally, conspiracy theories abound. His body was never recovered.

Reichen Lehmkuhl

Reichen Lehmkuhl born 26 December 1973

Reichen Lehmkuhl, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, became famous in the US for winning season four of the reality game show The Amazing Race with his then-'husband' Chip Arndt.

After Lehmkuhl's parents divorced when he was five, his family moved to Norton, Massachusetts and his mother remarried. He later changed his first name legally from Richard to Reichen. At age 16, he received his nomination from United States Congressman Barney Frank for admission to the United States Air Force Academy. After graduating in 1996, he served five years and attained the rank of Captain before his honourable discharge. He has since advocated for gay rights in the military as a spokesperson for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

Lehmkuhl was working simultaneously as a Physics teacher at Crossroads School for the Arts and Sciences, flight instructor and model in Los Angeles when he was approached by a casting director for The Amazing Race. Lehmkuhl and Arndt were a happy couple during the competition but have since split. Lehmkuhl moved to Dallas, Texas briefly after his win on The Amazing Race but before all episodes had been broadcast. Reichen's spending habits at that time caused speculation that he had won The Amazing Race — and that he and Arndt had broken up.

Lehmkuhl hosted The Reichen Show on Q Television Network until Q Television ceased operations on May 2006. His autobiography Here's What We'll Say, about his time in the Air Force under the military's commonly called 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy, was published in October 2006. He publishes a beefcake calendar each year and has appeared on sitcoms, soap operas, and other reality shows.

On July 26, 2006, former 'N Sync band member Lance Bass told People Magazine that he was gay and in a relationship with Lehmkuhl. The revelation was prompted by a highly active rumour mill generated by the celebrity blogging community. Lemkuhl moved in with Bass shortly thereafter.

After much conflicting tittle tattle concerning their relationship Lehmkuhl and Bass spilt up in January 2007.

Lehmkulhl is now in a relationship with personal trainer, model and new 'face' of Emporio Armani underwear Ryan Barry.

Reichen Lehmkuhl

Ernst Röhm

Ernst Röhm born 28 November 1887 (d. 1934)

Ernst Julius Röhm was a German military officer, and the commander and co-founder of the Nazi Sturmabteilung, or storm troopers — the SA, also known as 'Brownshirts'.

Ernst Röhm was one of the most prominent of a number of early Nazi party members who was a homosexual, and his homosexuality was ultimately the pretext used for his removal during the purge of the SA. The real reason was the threat he eventually posed to Hitler's authority. Having been outed in 1925, Röhm made little attempt to hide his sexuality. Despite Hitler's pretense of shock upon discovering his deputy's sexual orientation, he had in fact long known - probably since 1919 - that Röhm was homosexual.

During Röhm's tenure at the head of the SA, it has been suggested that a number of homosexual men (notably Karl Ernst, a former bouncer at a gay nightclub, and Edmund Heines) were appointed to and promoted within the SA as a result of high-level liaisons with powerful SA figures. Röhm's Brownshirt militia - mostly undisciplined soldiers and roughnecks from the city-slums - contained many gay men, and there was debauchery in the ranks. This was despite the openly anti-gay policies of the Nazis, exemplified by their strengthening of Paragraph 175 (criminalising homosexual acts) of the German Criminal Code of 1871.

Röhm was executed without trial during the purge of the SA — the so-called 'Night of the Long Knives' in June 1934.

In the wake of Röhm's execution, Hitler ordered the registration of homosexuals and the Gestapo was charged with the responsibility of creating dossiers on homosexuals and other 'asocials' in the Third Reich. The beginning of the Nazi terror against homosexuals was marked by the murder of Ernst Röhm.

Ernst Röhm
The Gay Holocaust - Nazi Persecution: The Röhm Affair

On a personal note, I gave considerable thought as to whether I wanted to feature a leading Nazi in Gay For Today - this site has always been intended to mark and celebrate the contributions of gay men to (usually) the worlds of the arts, media, sport, politics and entertainment and so on - but a Nazi? And Hitler's deputy to boot. However, the story of Ernst Röhm's openness about his sexuality, his leading role in the early days of the Nazis - he very much believed in the 'socialist' part of National Socialism - and the way Hitler tolerated this powerful homosexual as long as he was useful to him and then ruthlessly snuffed him out and purged the SA and then Germany of homosexuals is interesting and significant.

In the end, yes, Ernst Röhm was a gay man and a Nazi but he ultimately became a victim of the Nazis and his death, as it says above, marked the real beginning of the still tragically under-told story of the Nazi terror against homosexuals - an intensely dark period in the long, dark history of gay persecution and oppression.

Oliver Sipple

Oliver Sipple born 20 November 1941 (d. 1989)

Oliver 'Billy' Sipple was a decorated Marine and Vietnam War veteran widely known in the US for saving the life of President Gerald Ford during an assassination attempt in San Francisco on 22 September 1975.

Sipple was born in Detroit, Michigan. He served in the United States Marines and saw action in Vietnam. Shrapnel wounds suffered in December 1968 caused him to finish out his tour of duty in a Philadelphia veterans hospital, from which he was released in March 1970. He later spent six months in San Francisco's VA hospital, and was frequently being readmitted into the hospital in 1975, the year he saved Ford's life.

Listed as being totally disabled on psychological grounds, he was unable to hold a job and was receiving disability pay. He lived, with a merchant seaman room-mate, in a fourth-floor walk-up apartment located in San Francisco's Mission District. Sipple was active in local causes, including the historic political campaigns of openly gay City Council candidate Harvey Milk.

Sipple was part of a crowd of about three thousand people who had gathered outside San Francisco's Saint Francis Hotel to see President Ford on 22 September 1975.

Ford, just emerging from the building, was vulnerable despite heavy security protection. Sipple noticed a woman next to him had pulled and levelled a .38-calibre pistol as Ford headed to his limousine. Reacting instinctively, Sipple lunged at the woman, Sara Jane Moore, just as her finger squeezed the trigger. While the gun did go off, the impact was enough to deflect her aim and cause the bullet to veer five feet wide of its mark. Had it not been for Sipple's action, the bullet could have struck the president.

The police and the Secret Service immediately commended Sipple for his action at the scene, while Ford thanked him in a letter. The news media portrayed Sipple as a hero but would eventually report on his outing by San-Francisco gay activists, thus disclosing his private life.

Though he was known to be a homosexual by various fellow members of the gay community, Sipple had not publicly 'come out of the closet'. His sexual identity was something he had always kept a secret from his family. He asked the press reporters to keep his homosexuality off the record, making it clear that neither his mother nor his employer had knowledge of his sexual orientation.

Despite his wishes, gay activist and politician Harvey Milk publicly proclaimed Sipple a 'gay hero' and said his act 'will help break the stereotype of homosexuals'. Gay liberation groups petitioned local media to give Sipple his due as a gay hero. Then columnist Herb Caen published the private side of the former Marine's story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Six other papers ran the column as well. After discovering her son's secret, Sipple's mother reacted to the knowledge of her son's sexual orientation by cutting off contact with him. Sipple's mother was reportedly harassed by her neighbours. When her son called to talk to her, she hung up on him. According to a 2006 Washington Post article, Sipple went through a period of estrangement with his parents, but the family later reconciled with his sexual orientation.

Sipple's mental and physical health sharply declined over the years. He drank heavily, gained weight, was fitted with a pacemaker, became paranoid and suicidal. On 2 February 1989, he was found dead in his bed, at the age of forty-seven. Earlier that day, Sipple had visited a friend and said he had been turned away by the Veterans' Administration hospital where he went concerning his difficulty in breathing.

His $334 per month apartment near the Tenderloin District of San Francisco was found with many newspaper clippings of his actions on the fateful September afternoon in 1975. His most prized possession was the framed letter from the White House.

Sipple's funeral was attended by 30 people, and he was buried in Golden Gate National Cemetery south of San Francisco.

A letter addressed to the friends of Oliver Sipple was on display for a short period after his death at one of his favourite bars.

'Mrs. Ford and I express our deepest sympathy in this time of sorrow involving your friend's passing...' President Gerald Ford, February, 1989.

Sipple's outing by the Chronicle remains a controversial subject in journalism ethics, raising questions about the appropriateness of reporting on his personal life.

Sipple filed a $15 million invasion of privacy suit against Caen, seven named newspapers, and a number of unnamed publishers, for publishing the disclosures. The Superior Court in San Francisco dismissed the suit, and Sipple continued his legal battle until May 1984, when a state court of appeals upheld the original dismissal.

Micky Burn

Micky Burn born 1912*

Michael 'Micky' Burn is an English journalist, commando, writer and poet.

Burn was born into a Roman Catholic family, and admits that in earlier life: 'I had been drawn to three autocracies: German National Socialism, Communism, and the Roman Catholic Church.' Burn's father was secretary and solicitor to the Duchy of Cornwall became a trusted confidant of the King; while his mother's family was instrumental in developing the golf-and-gambling resort of Le Touquet.

Burn spent an amount of time in Florence, befriending Alice Keppel, the former mistress of Edward VII. A homosexual, his lovers included later Soviet Union spy Guy Burgess. On two occasions during the 1930s, plagued by threats of blackmail, Burn took himself to the police, as homosexuality was then a crime.

Burn was introduced to German National Socialism by Nancy Mitford, who in 1936 arranged for Burn to meet Adolf Hitler, who signed his copy of Mein Kampf.

Burn then agreed to join The Times newspaper as a foreign correspondent. When World War II broke out, Burn quickly shifted his politics to Marxism.

Burn joined what were initially termed 'independent companies' that were first called storm troops, later renamed Commandos. Burn's team initial engagement was in Norway in 1940, part of the unsuccessful Allied campaign to counter the German invasion.

Burn was commander of 6 Troop, 2 Commando and leader of all Commando parties of Group 2 as part of the 1942 St Nazaire Raid. Although five of his colleagues were awarded the Victoria Cross, Burn's team after a failed land based escape were captured

Burn was interrogated, and eventually sent to Colditz Castle, Oflag IV-C. His captors, perhaps noting his royal connections and tattered copy of Mein Kampf, he was well treated.

Burn gave lectures to prisoners at Colditz, however, but due to his pre-war interest in Nazi philosophy he was widely regarded with distrust and scorn. However, shorthand learnt for previous employment in journalism meant Burn acted as scribe to Colditz's secret radio operator, Lieutenant-Colonel Jimmy Yule.

On liberation, Burn sent dispatches to The Times about what had gone on in Colditz, published in the times on the 19th and 21st April 1945. Burn had written a novel during his stay, which was published as Yes, Farewell in 1946.

When the war ended The Times gave Burn his job back, wary of what to do with someone of Burn's convictions. By chance he was assigned to Hungary, where he resultantly became the main British reporter on the political purges, and the faked trial of József Cardinal Mindszenty.

Despite his homosexuality, Burn suddenly fell in love with a widow who coped devotedly with his occasional lapses until her death. His friends - Victor Rothschild, Bertrand Russell, the Baroness Budberg rallied to keep him company.

Burn has written five books of non-fiction, four novels and four books of poetry — including a Keats Poetry Award volume. He presently enjoys reading his poetry aloud at regional poetry events.

This profile may not be up to the standard of accuracy I hope to achieve so will hopefully be updated soon.

*actual date unknown

Hector MacDonald

Hector Archibald MacDonald born 1852* (d. 1903)

Major-General Hector Archibald MacDonald was a distinguished but controversial officer in the British army. He committed suicide, possibly to avoid exposure as a homosexual.

Unlike most British generals of the time, he came from a humble background, and worked his way up from the ranks. Also unlike many generals, he was popular with his men, nicknamed Fighting Mac.

He was the son of a crofter, born at Muir of Allan-Grange in the Black Isle, Ross and Cromarty, Scotland, in 1852. As a boy he was employed in a drapers shop at Dingwall, but in 1870 he enlisted in the 92nd (Gordon) Highlanders.

He rose rapidly through the non-commissioned ranks, and had already been a Colour Sergeant for some years when, in the Afghan War of 1879, he distinguished himself in the presence of the enemy so much as to be promoted to commissioned rank, his advancement being equally acceptable to his brother officers and popular with the rank and file. As a subaltern he served in the First Boer War of 1880–81, and at Battle of Majuba Hill, where he was made prisoner, his bravery was so conspicuous that General Joubert gave him back his sword.

In 1885 he served under Sir Evelyn Wood in the reorganisation of the Egyptian army, and he took part in the Nile Expedition of that year. In 1888 he became a regimental captain in the British service, but continued to serve in the Egyptian army, being particularly occupied with the training of the Sudanese battalions. In 1889 he received the DSO for his conduct at the Battle of Toski and in 1891, after the action at Tokar, he was promoted substantive major.

In 1896 he commanded a brigade of the Egyptian army in the Dongola Expedition, and during the following campaigns he distinguished himself in every engagement, above all in the final Battle of Omdurman (1898) at the crisis of which Macdonald's Sudanese brigade, manoeuvring as a unit with the coolness and precision of the parade ground, repulsed the most determined attack of the Mahdists. Kitchener later acclaimed him as 'the real hero of Omdurman'.

After this great service Macdonald's name became famous in Britain, the popular sobriquet of 'Fighting Mac' testifying the interest aroused in the public mind by his career and his soldierly personality. He was promoted colonel in the army and appointed an aide-de-camp to the queen, and in 1899 he was promoted major-general and appointed to a command in India.

In December 1899, during the Second Boer War, he was called to South Africa to command the Highland Brigade, which had just suffered very heavily and had lost its commander in the Battle of Magersfontein. He commanded the brigade throughout Lord Roberts' Paardeberg, Bloemfontein and Pretoria operations, and in 1901 he was made a KCB.

In 1902 he was appointed to command the troops in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) but early in the following year he committed suicide by shooting himself with his pistol in Paris. Controversy surrounds this, but it now seems that the most likely explanation is that he was about to be court-martialled, facing charges of sodomy with Sri Lankan boys.

MacDonald had secretly married in 1884 and fathered a son, although he saw his wife on only four brief occasions in 19 years and never revealed his marriage to his military superiors.

Rumours circulated about a supposed affair with a male Boer prisoner in a concentration camp over which MacDonald had authority in South Africa in 1900, and about an unspecified irregular sexual activities in India in 1902. There were also rumours about his friendship with a Burgher (mixed-race) Ceylonese family, especially with the two sons. Nevertheless, there is no firm evidence concerning homosexual activities, and the Scottish verdict of 'not proven' seems appropriate concerning MacDonald's homosexuality.

He was lauded as a hero, and had a James Scott Skinner tune written in his honour called Hector the Hero. A memorial to him, in the form of a tower 100 ft high, was erected at Dingwall and completed in 1907.

For some years after his death there were rumours among his old soldiers that he was still alive, and even that the German General August von Mackensen was really him, but there is no truth in this.


*actual birthday unknown

László Almásy

László Almásy born 22 August 1895 (d. 1951)

Count László Ede Almásy de Zsadány et Törökszentmiklós was an Hungarian aristocrat, motorist, desert researcher, aviator, Scout-leader and soldier who also served as the basis for the protagonist in Michael Ondaatje's 1992 novel The English Patient and the movie based on it.

Almásy was born in Borostyánkő in the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy (modern-day Bernstein in Austria), into a non-titled Hun noble family. He was educated by a private tutor in Eastbourne from 1911 to 1914. During World War I, he served with the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Aviation Troops. He returned after the war to join Eastbourne Technical Institute while lodging again at the same address from November 1921 to June 1922. He was a member of the pioneering Eastbourne Flying Club.

After the war, Almásy continued to support King Karl of Austria, and, on two occasions, drove him to Budapest when he tried to get his throne back. It may be that Karl bestowed him unofficially with the title of count that Almásy only used outside of Hungary.

After 1921, Almásy worked as a representative of an Austrian car firm Steyr Automobile in Szombathely, and won many car races in their colours. He also organised hunting trips in Egypt for visiting Europeans. During his drive from Egypt to Sudan along the Nile in 1926, he developed an interest in the area and later returned there to drive and hunt. He also demonstrated Steyr vehicles in desert conditions in 1929 with two Steyr lorries and led his first expedition to the desert.

In 1932, he left to find the legendary Zerzura, the Oasis of the Birds, with three Britons, Sir Robert Clayton, Commander Penderel and Patrick Clayton, who were sponsored by Prince Kemal el Din. The expedition used both cars and a plane. They discovered prehistoric rock art sites in Uweinat and Gilf Kebir, and Almasy claimed that in 1933 he found the third valley of Zerzura in Wadi Talh.

He also discovered the magyarab tribe in Nubia, who speak Arabic but believe that they are the descendants of Hungarian soldiers who served in the army of Turkey in the 16th century.

Almásy had succeeded in turning into a serious explorer. Almásy, was given the nickname Abu Ramla (Father of the Sands) by his Bedouin friends. However, in the mid-1930s, the time for research and adventure was drawing to a close. In 1932 his former sponsor Clayton died — not from a crash-landing as described in The English Patient — but of an infection from a desert fly contracted in the Gilf Kebir region. However, Clayton's wife did die one year later (1933) in a mysterious plane crash.

Almásy recorded some of his adventures in the book Az ismeretlen Szahara (The Unknown Sahara), first published in 1934 in Budapest. The German edition, under the title Unbekannte Sahara. Mit Flugzeug und Auto in der Libyschen Wüste (The Unknown Sahara. By Airplane and Car in the Libyan Desert), was published five years later (1939) by Brockhaus in Leipzig. It contains accounts of his most sensational discoveries like the one of the Jebel Uweinat (the highest mountain of the Eastern Sahara desert), of the rock paintings in the Gilf Kebir and of the lost oasis of Zerzura.

Almasy's role in relation to the Gilf Kebir was not that of a discoverer. The Bedouins already knew it was there, but tended to avoid the caves except when searching for stray livestock, attributing the cave paintings inside to unpredictable spirits. Egyptian Prince Kemal ed Din wrote an article about Gilf Kebir for National Geographic in 1921. What Almásy did was to map and enter each cave and draw the paintings inside.

In the following years, Almásy led archaeological and ethnographical expeditions with the German ethnographer Leo Frobenius. He also worked in Egypt at Al Maza airfield as a flying instructor. After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he had to return to Hungary. The British suspected that he was a spy for the Italians — and vice versa. In fact he was a Hungarian who worked for which ever colonial power offered him the best surveying contract. Hungary formally joined the Axis powers by signing the Tripartite Pact in November of 1940.

The Abwehr (German military intelligence service) recruited him in Budapest. As a Hungarian reserve officer, he was assigned to the Luftwaffe as a Hauptmann (captain) and assigned to the Afrika Korps. In 1941–1942, he worked with the German troops of Erwin Rommel using his desert experience and led military missions, including Operation Salaam, to infiltrate two German spies through enemy lines in a manner similar to the allied Long Range Desert Group. This was not a covert operation: Almásy and his team wore German uniforms, although they used American vehicles with German crosses surreptitiously incorporated as part of the vehicles camoflage pattern. Almásy delivered the German (Abwehr) agents Hans Eppler and Peter Stanstede to Cairo in the same way. Rommel subsequently promoted Almásy to major.

The details of Almásy's role in World War II are likely to remain unclear. For delivering spies, he received the Iron Cross (Eisernes Kreuz) from Rommel. He was, however, never a spy nor a Nazi.

The real Almásy was a far cry from the character portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in the film based on Michael Ondaatje's novel, a dashing explorer who falls in love with another man's wife while working with the Royal Geographical Society in North Africa, and who helps the Nazis only as a way to be united with his love.

In real life he was an intrepid explorer, but he was also a homosexual who wrote passionate letters to a young German officer he tried to help avoid going to the Russian front. And he was a monarchist, obsessed with the idea of returning the Hapsburgs to the throne even when it was clear the empire was beyond redemption.

After the end of the desert war, Almásy relocated to Turkey where he became involved in a plan to cause an Egyptian revolt which never materialised. He then returned to Budapest where with his contacts from the Roman Catholic Church he helped save the lives of several Jewish families at a time when Jews were being sent to concentration camps.

After the war he was arrested in Hungary and ended up in a Soviet prison. After Communists took over in Hungary, Almásy was tried for treason in the Communist People's Court but was eventually acquitted. He escaped the country reputedly with the aid of British intelligence and they spirited him into British occupied Austria and were chased by a KGB 'hit squad' until they got him on a aeroplane to Cairo. They bribed Hungarian Communist officials to enable his release. He returned to Egypt at the invitation of King Faruk and became the technical director of the newly founded Desert Institute. He could not continue directing expeditions into the desert to search for King Cambyses' 'Lost Army' of history, the legendary Persian King whose army of 10,000 men had apparently vanished in the 'Sand Sea' that Almásy so loved.

Almásy became ill in 1951 during his visit in Austria. He died of dysentery in a hospital in Salzburg, where he was then buried. The epitaph on his grave, erected by Hungarian patriots in 1995, honours him as a 'Pilot, Saharaforscher und Entdecker der Oase Zarzura' (Pilot, Sahara Explorer, and Discoverer of the Zerzura Oasis).