Fyne Times Gay and Lesbian Magazine, UK
Gay Great - Justin Fashanu
Fashanu was born on 16th February 1961 in Attleborough, Norfolk. He was one of two sons born to a Nigerian Barrister who had moved to the UK for work.
Magnus Hirschfeld
Hirschfeld was born in 1868 to a successful Jewish family living in Koloberg, Germany. The country was historically anti-Semitic and so the young Hirschfeld knew the power of prejudice from a very early age.
Sue Sanders
To celebrate our education issue last April, Fyne Times decided to break with tradition and bring you the first ever living Gay Great!
Babe Zaharias
Mildred Ella Didriksen (later known as ‘Babe’ Zaharias) was the sixth of seven children born to Norwegian immigrants Hannah and Ole Didriksen.
Radclyffe Hall
From a very young age, Hall realised that she was different to her peers. Not only did she prefer masculine pursuits such as driving motorcars, but she also disliked her female name and girly clothes.
Ivor Novello
Ivor Novello Davis was born in the Cowbridge Road East area of Cardiff in a modest town house called Llwyn-yr-Eos. (Grove of the Nightingale).
Spencer Tracy
It is true that substantial evidence is lacking to back up claims that some of our Gay Greats were indeed gay, lesbian or bisexual.
Ethel Smyth
Ethel Mary Smyth was born in Sidcup in the mid 1800s. Her father was a major-general in the Royal Artillery and was well known in high society London circles.
Howard Robard Hughes Jr
Achieving great things in your chosen field doesn’t always mean the rest of your life is equally as laudable. This month’s Gay Great got the world up into the air, but didn’t always play by fair rules.
Isadora Duncan
Angela Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco in May 1877. She was the youngest of four children born to banker Joseph Charles Duncan and his wife Mary Dora Gray.
Renee Vivien
Pauline Mary Tarn (later Renée Vivien) was born in London to a wealthy British father and his American wife. Her father was a successful merchant and his daughters were born into luxury. The family remained together until the daughters were old enough to attend school.
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman Jr was the second born son of Walter Whitman Sr, a carpenter from West Hills, Long Island. The United States was a relatively young country and optimism was running high.
Jane Addams
Laura Jane Addams was born into a small community in Cedarville, Illinois (‘Laura’ seemed to have been dropped in favour of simple ‘Jane Addams’ quite early on).
Joe Meek
Many artists believe that their work will be their lasting legacy. A painter hopes that his creations will hang in galleries for years to come; filmmakers hope their movies will always be considered the best in their genre.
Lily Parr
Female football is still very much in the shadows. Most of us would be hard pushed to name a professional female player, let alone last year’s FA cup winners. Sexism in sport has always been rife, especially in sports that have traditionally been male dominated.
Sir Richard Francis Burton
Sir Richard Francis Burton was born on 19th March 1821 to a wealthy family. His father, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Netterville Burton, was a career soldier of Irish extraction. His mother, Martha Baker, was heiress to a wealthy Hertfordshire Squire.
Alfred Kinsey
Kinsey knew he needed to get to the truth and so he carefully planned a series of mass interviews all across the USA. He carefully recruited a team of interviewers and taught them various ways to make the subjects feel relaxed and open.
Frankie Howerd OBE
Francis Alick Howard was born in York during the Great War and was the eldest of three children born to Edith and Frank Howard. Howard senior was a soldier by profession and moved the family to Eltham in Kent a few years after his first child was born.
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut to a well heeled and highly liberal family. Head of the household was Dr Thomas Norval Hepburn, a distinguished urologist, who was one of the few medical professionals around at the time to voice the dangers of sexually transmitted illnesses.
Joe Orton
John Kingsley Orton was born at Causeway Lane Maternity Hospital, Leicester, in 1933. The family lived on modest means with father William Orton working as a council labourer...
Charles Laughton
This month’s Gay Great not only had his sexuality to deal with, but also had many other self-image issues. However unlike many others, he seemed to live a relatively happy life.
Francis Bacon
For this month’s Gay Great, there was no single childhood place to call home. As an adult, his search for stability infiltrated every area of his life from the places he lived to the work he produced.
Gertrude Stein
The gay community have long had the unfortunate reputation of conducting very short, fly-by-night relationships. Many people still believe that long term same sex relationships are simply not viable.
Hadrian
When it comes to being a world leader, presiding over peace and tranquillity just isn’t going to get you noticed! Most of the big names have a war or two to back up their legacies.
W H Auden
Quite often, the legacies of some very accomplished individuals are ruined by one mistake, one word out of line, one dodgy deal.
Graham Chapman
This month’s Gay Great was one of the few exceptional people who managed to make complete and utter nonsense highly palatable to the human brain.
Natalie Clifford Barney
Sometimes the people who have had the most influence upon their chosen profession are not the ones who do the actual performing.
Cole Porter
In our lifelong search for ‘the one’, is it possible that we are actually overlooking the ideal person simply because they are not the gender we have a sexual preference for?
Jack Kerouac
Every profession has its pioneers. Before Dick Fosbury, high jumpers would leap feet first over the pole; without Bill Gates, few of us would have the knowledge to use a computer...
Dirk Bogarde
This month’s Gay Great found a very special way of aiding the cause of homosexuals in pre-1967 Britain, and standing up for what he believed in without ever coming out publicly. Derek Niven Van den Bogaerde (later Dirk Bogarde) was born with a fantastic artistic legacy to draw from.
Kenneth Williams
Kenneth Charles Williams was born in late February 1926 in a modest area of London. His father, Charles Williams, was very Victorian in his ways and worked as a barber, leaving his wife at home to take care of Williams and his older sister all day.
Gay Great – DH Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was born on the 11th September 1885 in a rural Nottinghamshire town called Eastwood. His father, Arthur John Lawrence, was a hard working miner working in one of the many deep pits that dotted the town.
Gay Greats - Michelangelo Buonarroti
A man who toiled day and night for many years on one project, he forged from marble and paint some of the most breathtaking pieces of art in the world.
Kenny Everett
This month’s Gay Great managed to create a persona that was hyperactive, stupid and irreverent, yet at the same time innately lovable.
Dusty Springfield OBE
Throughout history, art has been inspired by our strongest emotions – love and desire. It must be difficult to write, compose, paint or act when your own feelings of love and desire are considered off limits.
Cecil Beaton
Today, the whole world is a photographer. With digital cameras now a standard feature of most new mobile phones, we have all become avid portrait snappers.
T. E. Lawrence – “Lawrence of Arabia”
What does achievement mean? For most of us, an achievement is getting a pay rise, passing our driving test, running a marathon.
Brian Epstein
Not all of our Gay Greats have been celebrated for their work whilst they were alive. For some, admiration didn’t even come until years after their death.
Tennessee Williams
There are not many playwrights and dramatists who (if they were living today) could boast that the stars of their shows were played by the likes of Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor.
Akhenaton
Over time, stories can become twisted and distorted beyondanyresemblance of actual events. From the small pieces of evidenceleftbehind, scientists can create several different life stories for the same man.
Susan B. Anthony
Looking at photos of activists in the past, it is often hard to view them as a radical, a partisan or a ‘hippie’ of their day. Such a prim and proper person couldn’t really have been so cutting edge, could they?
Wilfred Owen
Communicating the horror of a dreadful event to future generations is infinitely easier today than at any time in history. Speaking to today’s generations without images, music or interactivity is nigh on impossible.
Leonard Bernstein
When we think of a gay musician, chart music and cheesy boy bands usually come to mind! In recent years, it is definitely popular music in which the gay male has excelled, with lesbians cornering the folk area of the market.
Allen Ginsberg
Creativity is one of the most sought after commodities in life. People quit their jobs, sell their homes and throw away all their security to find it.
Samuel Barber
If you are only remembered for one single piece of work; one novel, one performance, one world record, has the rest of your career been in vain?
Edward Carpenter
There are, of course, thousands of great people who slip through the net of fame. Sometimes they are overshadowed in their time by another enthralling figure doing exactly the same thing just a few inches closer to the limelight.
Bessie Smith
Originality is at the root of innovative artistic creation, and for some reason it has been allowed to take precedence over other considerations in our appreciation of art.
Janice Joplin
Even though nature makes us all different, humans have an innate desire to conform. The rules governing ‘fitting in’ are complex and they change every day depending on the circumstances.
Lord Byron
One of the biggest steps towards immortality a human can take is when their name enters everyday language. Having something means that for generations, somebody, somewhere, will still know your name.
Freddie Mercury
The defining moment in any legend’s life is their death. Before a great person dies, they are simply the fodder of gossip columns across the world, a temporary starlet just like all the others. After they are gone, a haunting shadow and a deep reverence hangs over their name forever.
Wladziu Valentino Liberace
The trouble with talent is that it is such hard work! Even if you are born gifted, you still have to put in hours of tough grind before you get anywhere. Then there are the people around every corner just waiting to put you down and criticise you.
Tallulah Bankhead
It is not that any of our Gay Greats have hidden behind the bravado of their public life; it is that they could only find some sense of peace in their work.
Truman Capote
Of all the snippets of gossip throughout history, very few subjects have travelled faster down the grapevine than speculation over a mutual acquaintance’s homosexuality.
Eleanor Roosevelt
This month’s Gay Great did not set out with the single aspiration of becoming a hero or a person of power; she simply wanted to become a wife. In doing so, she afforded herself the chance to start a tide of change, the ripples of which we still feel today.
Florence Nightingale
It is odd to find the story of a Gay Great who was not a victim in some form. However, this month’s gay great was not a victim or an aggressor; in many ways she was simply one of the greatest heroines the world has ever seen.
Quentin Crisp
Society has a way of making people conform, a tried and tested formula that brings most people into line. If you are different then you are ridiculed, picked on and treated like an outsider.
Rudolf Nureyev
To create something truly beautiful is a rare gift. Those who are able to pick up an instrument, a paint brush or a pen and with that send a shiver down the spine of anybody who sees or hears it are truly blessed.
Marlene Dietrich
The true sexuality of some gay greats is still uncertain, as many lived in a time when the concept of labelling a person’s sexuality was non-existent. For some, their same-sex activities were kept very private.
Virginia Woolf
When your mother’s family own a large publishing company and your father is a literary critic, becoming a professional writer is more of an obligation than a dream!
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