Jeremy Corbyn: On Langston Hughes

As the great American poet Langston Hughes put it: “I see that my own hands can make the world that’s in my mind”.

When a British political leader can close a speech to party conference by quoting the gay African-American Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, you know this is some man.

PS JC tells Theresa May to read Oscar Wilde's De Profundis. So glad we've got a socialist literary fag hag leading the Labour Party. It feels like home again now. x

Pride Of Place: Pointless

The homes of Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Britten and Anne Lister, a woman considered the “first modern lesbian”, are being relisted as part of a gay history project undertaken by Historic England.

The heritage organisation has also announced that the grave of Amelia Edwards, a Victorian novelist and Egyptologist, is to be given listed status for the first time.

The listings are the result of a project called Pride of Place. Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, said buildings and places were witnesses to events that shaped society, but lesbian and gay stories had often been neglected...

Guardian online.

If you didn't know Oscar Wilde and Benjamin Britten were gay...

Mirror.

Keith Vaz: Viz

Ironically, this Times' cartoon by Peter Brookes is, like Viz, not very funny, but rather childish and 'ironically' bigoted.

Another great pun by Dave Brown at The Independent (no idea why it's taken cartoonists three days to get around to this).

Matt, Telegraph.

'Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to.'

Samuel Butler after the Wilde trials.

Oscar Wilde: Even More About Reading Gaol

Possibly not C33, Oscar's cell.

The Boy.

Reading Gaol: Back In Business

Reading Gaol, made infamous worldwide by the grim ballad written by its most famous prisoner, Oscar Wilde, closed its doors to prisoners in 2013. Now, for the first time in almost two centuries, it will reopen to outsiders.

They will be welcomed with installations by artists, readings by poets and writers – including De Profundis, the bitterly moving letter Wilde wrote from the jail, one page at a time on the single piece of paper he was allowed each day – and offered tours into the darkest and most feared part of the compound, the underground punishment cells where the prisoners were held for days in complete darkness and silence. It has all been organised by the arts producers Artangel and the National Trust.

“The recommendation was that prisoners should be locked up in the dark cells for no more than three days, but Oscar Wilde was actually kept there for two weeks, as punishment for talking to another prisoner in the chapel,” said Emily O’Neil, who has written the guide for the National Trust...

Guardian. 

Amazing fact: Fagburn's mum was posted there when she was training to be a probation officer.

PS The current Lord Queensberrry (86) speaks.

Colm Tóibín: De Profundis

Pretty thin gruel in today's papers, but here's Colm Tóibín on De Profundis, 'one of the greatest love letters ever written'.

A beautiful essay.

Oscar Wilde: Your Actual France

Paris will hold its first major exhibition on the life and work of Oscar Wilde next month, co-curated by his grandson.

Wilde, who spoke fluent French, was an ardent Francophile who regularly visited the city, eventually dying there in 1900, having been hounded out of England after his conviction for homosexuality. His tomb, in Paris’s Père Lachaise cemetery, is now a place of pilgrimage.

Yet the centenary of Wilde’s death – aged just 46 – was not celebrated in France, even though London honoured him with two exhibitions in 2000, at the British Library and the Barbican Centre. The Irish novelist, playwright and poet has only now been given full cultural recognition.

Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland, who lives in France, told the Guardian: “There has never been a major Paris exhibition on Oscar. Everybody is now saying, ‘well, why not?’ Oscar is going to be plastered all over the Metro and the buses. I think the French are quite surprised … that they never thought of doing this before.” ...

Guardian.

 • The Petit Palais exhibition, Oscar Wilde: Insolence Incarnate, runs from September 28th to January 15th.

Oscar Wilde: Reading Is Good

The doors of Reading Prison are to be opened to the public for the first time as cells are transformed into an art exhibition celebrating the life of Oscar Wilde.

Wilde, the author of The Ballad of Reading Gaol, was locked up in solitary at the prison from 1895 to 1897 for gross indecency, after details of his relationships with men came to light.

Cells will now be opened to the public to commemorate Wilde’s time in prison, as actors, writers and artists including Jeanette Winterson, Ai Weiwei, Ralph Fiennes, Maxine Peake, Steve McQueen and Ben Whishaw lend their talents...

Telegraph.

Und!

Telegraph.

Alpha-Homo: Turn To The Right

A major transformation of Europe is now in motion.

Our own Faith Goldy has pointed out the pitiful response of Europe’s men towards the recent epidemic of rape and sexual assault.

Of course, there are many men speaking out and fighting back, but often they are smothered by accusations of ‘racism’, ‘mansplaining’ and ‘white privilege’ or just ignored altogether.

Aside from strong women like Marine Le Pen and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the most oppositional voices have come from Europe’s gay men.

A prime example of this is Breitbart editor and leader of the Twitteratti-glitterati, Milo Yianoppolous, who has been strongly outspoken regarding Europe’s current predicament.

On a recent appearance on the BBC’s Big Questions, he made straight men in the room look like damp rags and rightly deserved the right to tweet, "I am one of the very few alpha homosexuals."

It’s not just Milo, but other gay men like Douglas Murray and David Starkey, who are increasingly representing the masculine voice on British television.

The rise in gay men who are concerned about Europe’s future is not just limited to charismatic TV personalities. At the grassroots level too, there is a lot of evidence that Europe’s gay men are leading the way in opposition to Islamification...

These "alpha-homos" remind me very much of Oscar Wilde. When a group of rugby boys arrived at Wilde’s dormitory to destroy his blue and white china, the 6' 3" Wilde picked up the first boy, threw him, and knocked them all down the stairs as if he was playing a game of skittles. Wilde then said, "Well boys, that’s enough of that game, if you want to I shall make you toast with anchovy butter and tell you stories." The rugby boys meekly went back up the stairs, sat and were enraptured by his tales.

We have a moral duty to protect 50 years’ worth of fighting to achieve gay rights. Not only this, but we have a moral duty to maintain Europe as a safe haven for refugee gay men fleeing the least tolerant regions of the world.

James Campbell, The Rebel Blogger.

Uh-huh...

Oscar Wilde: Happy Birthday

xxx

PS I have now outlived you.

Tweet Of The Day: So Sad

So sad. #JustinBieber lookalike #TobySheldon found dead http://t.co/074VgGibWj pic.twitter.com/CvyRUEOuj8

— Perez Hilton (@PerezHilton) August 26, 2015

To quote Saint Oscar; 'It would take a heart of stone...'

Equalities: Schqualities

David Cameron has appointed to the post of equalities minister a second Conservative MP who voted against gay marriage.

Caroline Dinenage, the MP for Gosport, will join Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, in the Equalities Office. Morgan also voted against equal marriage, but later indicated she had changed her mind.

Pink News reported in 2013 that Dinenage had said in a letter to a constituent that the “state has no right” to redefine the meaning of marriage and that “preventing same-sex couples from being allowed to marry takes nothing away from their relationship”.

She later told the Portsmouth News: “I can see some of the points in it but it’s more the actual way the bill is written. I think it’s written in a hurried and ill-thought-out way and we haven’t really looked at what the potential long-term consequences are, particularly given that there is a quadruple lock on the Church of England but there isn’t that sort of protection for other faiths.

“I’m concerned that in the future, teachers may be forced to teach civil partnership and gay marriage whether it’s in their religious belief to do so or not. It seems that in some ways we’re marginalising some people’s religious freedom in favour of sexual freedom.”

Cameron caused controversy when he originally gave the equalities brief to Morgan in the previous government, as she had also voted against same-sex marriage...

The Guardian.

Fagburn is reminded of that oft-quoted remark by Oscar Wilde; to appoint one anti-equality equalities minister may be regarded as incongruous and offensive, to appoint two looks like a handbag separated by a common language who knows the value of nothing looking at the stars. [Subs, pls check this].

Will Self: Oscar Wilde, Champagne Socialism And Why I'm Voting Labour

Wilde seeks to define the individual type of the coming socialist age: “With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” It might be argued that in rejecting the institutions of marriage and family, while taking himself – a quasi-closeted gay artist in hypocritical late-Victorian England – as the representative type of the coming age, Wilde was genuinely prophetic. After all, whatever else we may say about contemporary Britain, there’s little doubt that many people perceive it as a society in which they can be themselves sexually, individually and creatively; that this self-realisation is fully articulated within capitalist metrics would presumably be shocking even to Wilde. Soothsayer or not, he never imagined the pink pound would become legal tender...

Wilde writes: “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” Yet for him, in his essay, the two are conflated, because for all utopians, no matter how anarchistic they may think themselves to be, the premise underlying their brave new worlds is that everyone cravenly become exactly like them – and while I myself am perfectly happy to emulate Wilde, I’m not sure being a flamboyant literary figure is likely to fulfil everyone’s needs, nor lie within everyone’s ability. No, I’m no longer a socialist if to be one is to believe that a socialist utopia is attainable by some collective feat of will – but I remain a socialist, if by “socialism” is understood an antipathy to vested interests and privileges neither deserved nor earned, and a strong desire for a genuinely egalitarian society. And that is why, for the first time since 1997, I will be voting Labour in a general election.

Will Self, The Guardian Review.

And here is The Soul Of Man Under Socialism of which Will writes.

Oscar Wilde: Jailbait

The only known photograph of a working-class man Oscar Wilde took an interest in [Sic] has been unearthed in a search of Reading Prison archives.

The picture of Henry Bushnell was found by Prof Peter Stoneley, from the University of Reading, who carried out a study of Wilde's fellow prisoners.

He said the playwright had been "attracted to" Bushnell but details of their relationship were unknown.

Wilde was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for homosexuality in 1895.

In a letter the disgraced [Sic] playwright mentioned a "little dark-eyed chap", believed to be labourer Bushnell, who was jailed for theft 21 times between 1892 and 1911, said Prof Stoneley.

Most inmates were not photographed but, as a repeat offender, Bushnell was. There are seven mugshots of him in the archives of the recently closed Reading Prison...

BBC News.

You got good taste, Oscar!

Oscar Wilde: 160 Today!

'All authority is quite degrading'

Happy birthday, you big fat Irish poof!

x

'A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. 

And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. 

Progress is the realisation of Utopias.'

Oscar Wilde: Nonce!

Next year marks the 120th anniversary of the playwright, wit and poet’s conviction for gross indecency with a string of young men, which saw him sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. More than a century later the details of his downfall have lost none of their power to fascinate and shock. What is more, the recent trials for sexual offences of high-profile figures from Rolf Harris to Max Clifford have lent the Wilde case a dubious kind of lustre, giving it the status of what Wilde’s grandson, Merlin Holland, recently described as “one of the very first celebrity trials”. In a timely move, a new play co-written by Holland and opening in London next week gives us an opportunity to review it...

The Independent On Sunday - sans irony - wonders how Oscar Wilde would have fared in our Operation Yewtree age of paedomania, and pronounces him GUILTY!!

Antony Edmonds, author of a new biography, Oscar Wilde's Scandalous Summer, is quoted;

"He certainly paid for sex with youths under the age of 18 which is a criminal offence. But even if his activities had led only to exposure and not to arrest, he would have been savagely pilloried in the media. Wilde was 39 when he seduced Alphonse Conway, and Conway was an inexperienced boy of 16. I’m sure that Wilde’s plays would have been taken off the stage just as quickly today as they were in 1895.”

How sad, how true...

Thought For The Day: Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde: Marquis Cha-Cha

Oscar Wilde's libel trial against the Marquess of Queensberry began to day in 1895.

The things we do for love...
x

Nigel Evans: De Profundis

MP Nigel Evans told a jury yesterday he was being depicted as “a cross between Alan Clark, Benny Hill and Oscar Wilde”.

The ex-Commons deputy speaker, who denies sexually abusing seven young men and a rape, said the charges were “ridiculous”.

Evans, 56, is accused of putting his hands down the trousers of two men.

Mark Heywood, cross-examining, said: “Was this you using hands where words were not available to you?”

Evans replied: “No. It is trying to make me out to be a cross between Alan Clark (the late Tory politician), Benny Hill and Oscar Wilde. It’s ridiculous. The answer is no.”

The gay MP said the accusations had ended his hopes of being Commons speaker.

The trial at Preston Crown Court continues tomorrow.

The Sun.

Repeat: So much of this case just stinks.

Fagburn - and you, yes you - could probably be charged with some of the 'crimes' he's been accused of. 

Prisons: Banning Books

New rules introduced by the justice secretary ban anyone sending in books to prisoners. From now on, any man, woman or child in prison will not be able to receive a book from outside. This is part of an increasingly irrational punishment regime orchestrated by Chris Grayling that grabs headlines but restricts education or rehabilitation....

Frances Crook (!), the Howard League For Penal Reform, politics.co.uk

What a spectacular act of stupid mean-spirited cruel cuntery.

Brought to you by Chris Grayling, the Tory 'Justice' Secretary, who also thinks gay couples should be banned from B&Bs.

Update: The Ballad Of Not Reading In Gaol featuring Vanessa Redgrave!!!