England

Poet

b. February 21, 1907
d. September 29, 1973

“If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.”

Wystan Hugh (W.H.) Auden was a Pulitzer Prize-winning British-born poet who became an American citizen at age 39. Inspired by Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and T. S. Eliot, he is considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Auden spent his childhood in Birmingham, England. His mother was a devout Anglican. His father was a renowned physician and academic. Auden’s poetry reflects both his mother’s Christian ideals and his father’s interest in folklore and mythology.

After receiving a scholarship to Oxford University, Auden studied science and engineering before switching to English. He developed a close friendship with Christopher Isherwood, a childhood acquaintance and fellow Oxford student. Auden later moved to Berlin with Isherwood, where they frequented a local gay bar and experienced the city’s “decadent homosexual subculture.”

In 1930 Faber & Faber published “Poems,” Auden’s first collection. He spent the next five years teaching English in private schools.

In 1935 Auden married Erika Mann, a lesbian writer and actress and the daughter of the novelist Thomas Mann. A marriage of convenience, the union helped Mann, who was a German Jew, obtain a British passport to escape the Nazis. The couple fled to Britain, where Auden worked as a freelance writer. He began traveling the world and writing about his experiences in Germany, Iceland and China.

Auden quickly earned recognition for his exceptional wit, fluency in virtually all forms of verse, and unique commentary on morals, love and politics. In 1937, motivated by leftist ideology, he traveled to Spain and participated the Spanish Civil War. He published his activist poem, “Spain 1937,” to raise money for Spanish medical aid.

In 1939 Auden and Isherwood moved to New York, where Auden met his lifelong love, Chester Kallman, and they began a relationship. Auden wanted monogamy with the aspiring young poet, but Kallman would not commit. Heartbroken, Auden eventually accepted it, telling Kallman, “We’re a funny pair, you and I.”

From 1942 to 1945, Auden taught at Swarthmore College. In 1946 he acquired U.S. citizenship. He and Kallman spent their summers together in Europe. Auden won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for “The Age of Anxiety” in 1948. He received the National Book Award for Poetry for “The Shield of Achilles” in 1956 and began lecturing at Oxford University as a professor of poetry.

Auden died unexpectedly in Vienna, Austria, in 1973. The attacks of 9/11 revived his poem, “September 1, 1939,” about the outbreak of World War II. It became one of Auden’s best-known works, even though he had grown to despise it during his lifetime.

Trailblazing Writer

b. August 26, 1904
d. January 4, 1986

“One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.”

Christopher Isherwood is an Anglo-American writer who was among the first to bring gay themes to mainstream literary audiences. Much of his work is semi-autobiographical, including “Goodbye to Berlin,” the novel that inspired the Tony Award-winning musical and Academy Award-winning film “Cabaret.”

Isherwood was born in 1904 near Manchester, England. From an early age, he formed friendships with people from all walks of life, some of whom later became his creative collaborators. In 1924, after submitting joke answers on his second-year exams, Isherwood was asked to leave Cambridge University. Embracing his newfound freedom, he took part-time jobs as the secretary of a string quartet and as a private tutor. He worked on his first novels and briefly attended medical school.

In 1929 Isherwood visited his friend, the poet W.H. Auden, in Berlin. The trip changed his life, bringing him “face to face with his tribe” and beginning his liberation as a gay man. Isherwood moved to Berlin later that year. His experiences and friendships there provided material for his novels “Mr. Norris Changes Trains” and “Goodbye to Berlin.” The latter, which depicts Germany’s pre-Nazi decadence, became Isherwood’s most famous work and cemented his legacy. The book was adapted into the play “I Am a Camera” and the musical “Cabaret,” which earned eight Tony Awards. The film version of “Cabaret,” starring Liza Minnelli, won eight Academy Awards.

In Berlin, Isherwood also began a relationship with a young German, Heinz Neddermeyer. The pair fled the Nazis, who were persecuting homosexuals, and moved across Europe until the Gestapo arrested Neddermeyer in 1937.

Isherwood returned to London, where he wrote plays and screenplays, before settling in Hollywood. He became a U.S. citizen in 1946. Seven years later, he fell in love with a college student, Don Bachardy. The couple remained together for more than 30 years, until Isherwood’s death. The relationship became a model for many gay men.

In his later years, Isherwood turned increasingly to autobiographical and gay themes. In 1964 he published the critically acclaimed novel, “A Single Man,” about a gay middle-aged English professor. A film adaptation, directed by Tom Ford and starring Colin Firth, premiered in 2009. It earned international recognition, including an Academy Award nomination for best actor.

In Isherwood’s 1976 memoir, “Christopher and His Kind,” the author renounced his reticence to admit his homosexuality in his earlier work. The memoir speaks candidly about his life in Berlin as a young gay man.

Isherwood died of prostate cancer in Santa Monica, California. He was 81.

Pioneering Feminist

b. April 3, 1791
d. September 22, 1840

“I love and only love the fairer sex.”

A pioneering 19th century English feminist, industrialist and landowner, Anne Lister is widely considered the first notable out lesbian in history. She kept extensive diaries—23 volumes over 34 years—documenting her life and same-sex relationships.

Lister was born into an aristocratic English family. She received formal schooling, a rarity for a girl of that era.

In 1826 she became the sole owner of the family manor, Shibden Hall, located near Halifax in West Yorkshire. She inherited the 400-year-old 400-acre estate, now a public historic site, after the death of her aunt.
 
Desiring whatever a man could have, Lister also wanted a wife. She engaged in a series of passionate lesbian love affairs before establishing a relationship with Ann Walker, another wealthy single woman. Though homosexuality was taboo and same-sex marriage unheard of, in 1834 the couple swore their love on the Bible, exchanged rings and consecrated their union by receiving communion at the local parish, Holy Trinity Church. Considering themselves married, they moved into Shibden Hall.

Lister began meticulously chronicling her life and same-sex liaisons as a 15-year-old schoolgirl desperate to express her innermost feelings. She referred to her sexuality as her “oddity.” The term “lesbian” had yet to enter the language. For secrecy and her own safety, she concocted an elaborate system of codes and symbols to convey erotic or sensitive passages. Her intimate journaling continued after she and Walker wed.

In decoding Lister’s diaries, scholars not only uncovered the explicit details of her sexual relationships, but also a complete, vivid portrait of the woman herself: a tough-minded maverick who openly defied norms during a time of strict gender roles and female oppression. Confident and educated, she traveled extensively, managed her own estate and finances, and operated coal mining pits. Lister dressed in black, often in men’s clothing. “The people generally remark, as I pass along, how much I am like a man,” she wrote. Dubbed with the slur “gentleman Jack,” she provoked gossip and taunts.

In 2018 the York Civic Trust in England awarded Holy Trinity Church a permanent historical marker,  known as a blue plaque. In 2019 its wording was updated to read: “Anne Lister 1791-1840 of Shibden Hall, Halifax / Lesbian and Diarist; took sacrament here to seal her union with Ann Walker / Easter 1834.”

In April 2019, HBO and BBC One premiered “Gentleman Jack,” an eight-episode dramatic series about Lister, written and directed by BAFTA-winner Sally Wainwright.

Lister died as the result of an insect bite she sustained while traveling in Russia. She was 49.

Philosopher & Author

b. May 8, 1954

“Having an identity doesn’t, by itself, authorize you to speak on behalf of everyone of that identity.”

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Ph.D., is a distinguished philosopher, author and professor who specializes in the philosophy of mind and language and the intellectual history of Africa and African-Americans.

Born in London, England, Appiah grew up in Ghana. His father, a native Ghanaian, was a well-known lawyer and politician. His mother, the daughter of a British statesmen, was an author and scholar. Their widely publicized marriage was one of the first interracial “society weddings” in Britain. It is thought to have inspired the 1967 film, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”

Appiah received much of his education in England. He completed his bachelor’s degree in philosophy 1975 from Cambridge University. After teaching at the University of Ghana, he returned to Cambridge for his doctorate, graduating in 1982. He speaks five languages.

Appiah writes about ethics for The New York Times. He has published three novels, short fiction and numerous academic books. He is acclaimed for his groundbreaking scholarship, particularly on the philosophy and politics of personal identity. His work has been translated into more than 15 languages.

His early book “In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture” (1992), received an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and a  Herskovits Award  for “the most important scholarly work in African studies published in English.” His book “Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race” (1996), coauthored by Amy Gutman, presents his critique of the concept of biological race and how individuals frequently overemphasize it as part of their identity. In the “The Ethics of Identity” (2004), he explains how ideas around “group identities,” such as race and gender, can add to or detract from notions of individual freedom.

Appiah has lectured worldwide and taught at leading universities, including Yale, Cornell, Duke and Harvard. As an openly gay scholar, he served for 13 years on the editorial board of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, published by Duke University Press.

In 2002 Appiah joined the faculty of Princeton University, where he held appointments in the Philosophy Department and the University Center for Human Values, before becoming a professor emeritus. In 2014 he went on to New York University, where he teaches law and philosophy.

Composer & Suffragette

b. April 22, 1858
d. May 8, 1944

“I feel I must fight for [my music], because I want women to turn their minds to big and difficult jobs; not just to go on hugging the shore, afraid to put out to sea.”

Ethel Mary Smyth was a pioneering British composer who helped popularize opera in the United Kingdom. She became a fervent champion of women’s rights and the first woman composer to be awarded damehood.

Smyth was born the fourth of eight children in Sidcup, Kent, outside of London. Her father, a major general in the Royal Artillery, opposed her musical aspirations. Smyth defiantly persevered, learning from esteemed tutors. She studied composition at Leipzig Conservatory in Germany and received encouragement from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonín Dvořák and Johannes Brahms. 

Along with operas, Smyth wrote choral arrangements, symphonies and chamber music. She first captured attention for her “Mass in D” (1892). Her 1902 opera, “Der Wald,” broke attendance records in London. It became the only opera composed by a woman ever produced by the New York Metropolitan Opera. This held true for well over a century, until 2016.

Smyth composed her most famous work, “The Wreckers,” in 1906. Critics extoled it as one of the most important English operas. 

By 1910 Smyth had established herself as a leading member of the women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom. She took time off from composing to join the Women’s Social and Political Union. She participated in marches and protests for women’s rights and full equality. During this period, she was incarcerated for two months after the authorities arrested her and more than 100 other suffragettes for breaking the windows of their political opponents. In 1911 Smyth composed “The March of Women,” which became the anthem for England’s women’s movement.

Smyth was public about her nonconformist sexual identity. Many of her romantic partners were famous women, including the French Empress Eugénie and the English modernist writer Virginia Woolf. 

Smyth wrote 10 books and many have been written about her. She openly discussed her experiences in several autobiographies. She once wrote, “I wonder why it is so much easier for me to love my own sex more passionately than yours.”  

In 1922 Smyth was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her accomplishments as a composer. In 1926 Oxford University presented her with an honorary doctorate. Despite the fanfare, as a woman she struggled to get her music performed. 

For her 75th birthday, Smyth was honored with a festival in Royal Albert Hall celebrating her lifetime achievements. She began to lose her hearing at age 54 and went completely deaf before the end of her life. She died at age 86. 

Rock Star

b. January 8, 1947
d. January 10, 2016

“It’s true—I’m bisexual. … I suppose it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Born David Robert Jones in London, David Bowie was a singer, songwriter, actor and record producer. He is among the best-selling recording artists in the world. 

Bowie first splashed onto the music charts in 1969 with “Space Oddity.” The song became one of his best known and among three of his recordings to be included in The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Bowie went on to experiment with a variety of musical styles that came to define him as an innovator.

With his first album, “The Man Who Sold the World,” Bowie helped usher in the era of glam rock, a style known for its androgynous-looking performers, make-up and flamboyant costumes. 

Bowie followed his debut with a string of musical successes, notably “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.” The 1972 concept album featured his gender-bending alter-ego, Ziggy Stardust, an alien rock star. The same year, in an interview with Melody Maker magazine, Bowie came out as gay. He later told Playboy he was bisexual. 

In 1976 Bowie starred in “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” the first of his many film roles. He experimented with highly theatrical live shows and narrated “Peter and the Wolf” with the Philadelphia Orchestra—the first of his many children’s projects. He made his Broadway debut in “The Elephant Man.” In addition to music, film and theater, Bowie was also an accomplished artist whose work was shown at international galleries.

Bowie produced important albums for Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and Mott the Hoople, and collaborated with artists such as John Lennon, the band Queen, and Mick Jagger, with whom he had been romantically linked. 

In 1993 he told Rolling Stone magazine that declaring his bisexuality was “the biggest mistake” he ever made. He would later say he had “no problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no inclination to hold any banners nor be a representative of any group of people.”  

In 1996 Bowie was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and became the first musician to release a song for download. His 30th and final studio album, “Blackstar,” was released just two days before he died of cancer.

Bowie was married twice to women, the second time to the model Iman (his widow). He was the father of a son and a daughter. 

Neurologist and Author

b. July 9, 1933
d. August 30, 2015

“We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think.”

Oliver Sacks was a British-born physician and best-selling author who specialized in neurology. He spent most of his professional life in the United States. The New York Times called him “the poet laureate of medicine.” 

Sacks came from a long line of scientists. His father was a physician and his mother was one of the first female surgeons in England. Sacks’s first autobiography, “Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood,” chronicles his early experiences escaping the Blitz during World War II and being enrolled at a cruel boarding school. 

Sacks graduated in 1956 from Queen’s College, Oxford, with a degree in biology and physiology. He came to the United States in the 1960s to complete a residency at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco. He pursued fellowships in neurology and psychiatry at UCLA. As part of his 2012 book, “Hallucinations,” he discussed his experimentation with recreational drugs and its effects on his brain.

After moving to New York City, Sacks began documenting his observations about neurological diseases, which led to his book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” His treatment of patients suffering from a rare illness became the basis of “Awakenings,” which was adapted into a 1990 Academy Award-nominated film starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. His book “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain” also inspired a film, “Musical Minds,” on the PBS series “Nova.” Sacks created the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, where he served as a medical adviser. 

Sacks regularly contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and The London Review of Books, as well as many medical publications. The recipient of numerous honors, he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996 and was named a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1999. He was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to literature in 2008. 

Sacks lived alone for most of his life. He spoke about being gay for the first time in his 2015 autobiography, “On the Move: A Life.” He said he was celibate for 35 years before beginning a long-term relationship with writer Bill Hayes in 2008. “It has sometimes seemed to me that I have lived at a certain distance from life,” he wrote. “This changed when Billy and I fell in love.” They were together until his death.

Sacks wrote about his uveal melanoma, which affects the eye, in his 2010 book, “The Mind’s Eye.” When in 2014 the cancer returned in his liver and brain, he announced it in The New York Times. He died at age 82.

Singer

b. April 16, 1939
d. March 2, 1999

“My sexuality has never been a problem to me, but I think it has been for other people.”

Dusty Springfield was an English singer and record producer best known for her sultry, soulful sound. Born Mary Isobel Bernadette O’Brien in London (she got the nickname Dusty for playing football with the boys), Springfield was one of the most successful British female performers in history, with six top 20 singles in the United States and 16 in Europe. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the U.K. Music Hall of Fame.

In 1958 Springfield joined her first singing group, The Lana Sisters, later forming The Springfields with her brother. She first received attention for her hit “I Only Want to Be With You,” and later with a string of solo songs like “Wishin’ and Hopin’” and “Son of a Preacher Man.”

Springfield received acclaim in 1969 when she released “Dusty in Memphis,” an album that was awarded a prestigious spot in the Grammy Hall of Fame. She also became known for her blonde bouffant, heavy makeup and colorful evening gowns—a style emblematic of the Swinging Sixties. 

Springfield spent many years out of the public eye, reappearing in 1987 to collaborate with the Pet Shop Boys on “What Have I Done to Deserve This,” which topped both the U.S. and U.K. music charts. By the 1990s, Springfield’s music was experiencing a renaissance, appearing on several film soundtracks, including “Pulp Fiction.”

During the late 1960s and early ’70s, Springfield was romantically linked to Norma Tanega, a California-born singer-songwriter who wrote a few of Springfield’s songs such as “Go My Love.” During an interview in 1970, Springfield said, “People say that I’m gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay. I’m not anything.” 

She was linked to many women during her life, including photojournalist Faye Harris and singer Carole Pope. In 1982 she married actress Teda Bracci, whom she met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Though the wedding wasn’t legally 

recognized, they lived together for two years. 

Later in life, Springfield became a camp icon, attracting gay fans and drag impersonators. In 1994 a breast cancer diagnosis took a toll on her career. 

Springfield’s inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame came just two weeks after her death. At the induction, her friend Elton John said, “I just think she was the greatest white singer there has ever been … Every song she sang, she claimed as her own.”

Rock Star

b. July 26, 1943

“I wasn’t trying to be rebellious … I was just being me.”

Mick Jagger is the lead singer of the Rolling Stones, a British rock band whose popularity has spanned more than 50 years. As one of the most influential and charismatic front men in history, Jagger has received many awards and accolades. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 and was knighted in 2003. Rolling Stone magazine names him among the top 20 on its List of 100 Greatest Singers.

Immersed in the counterculture of the 1960s, Jagger and his bandmates became famous after releasing a string of successful albums and making TV and live concert appearances around the world. They collaborated with fellow superstars throughout the ’70s and ’80s, rubbing elbows with the famous and infamous, including Andy Warhol, the gay pop artist who created a portrait series of Jagger.

During the 1970s, Jagger adopted a gender-nonconforming stage persona, experimenting with makeup and glam-rock fashion. He became a fixture at New York’s famed Studio 54, often seen with gay icons like writer Truman Capote, fashion designer Halston and dancer Rudolf Nureyev. Jagger is credited with opening up “definitions of gendered masculinity.”

In 1985 Jagger performed at Live Aid in Philadelphia, where he covered “Dancing in the Street” with David Bowie, another gender-nonconforming rock star with whom he has been romantically linked.

Jagger also launched a successful solo career and acted in several movies, most notably the 1970 British crime drama “Performance,” in which he plays a bisexual.

Jagger and the Rolling Stones have been the subject of many documentaries, including “Gimme Shelter,” filmed during the band’s 1969 U.S. tour, during which several people died; “Sympathy for the Devil” by Jean-Luc-Goddard; and “Shine a Light” by Martin Scorsese.

Jagger has been married twice and is the father of seven children. He has been involved with other women and men over the years.

Rock Star

b. September 5, 1946, Zanzibar, Tanzania

d. November 21, 1991, London, England

“Success has brought me world idolization and millions of pounds. But it has prevented me from having the one thing we all need, a loving, ongoing relationship.”

Freddie Mercury ranks among the most sensational rock ’n’ roll vocalists in history. He was one of the leading musicians, record producers and songwriters of the 1980s.

Born Farrokh Bulsara to Parsi parents, Mercury was a British citizen who spent his childhood in India. At age 7, he began to study piano. When he was 8, he matriculated to an all-boys school near Bombay (now Mumbai). While enrolled there, he adopted the name “Freddie” and formed a band, the Hectics. In his teens, he moved with his family to Middlesex, England.

When he was 24, Mercury, with guitarist Brian May and percussionist Roger Taylor, formed Queen. Mercury designed the crest of the band, which features the zodiac signs of all the band members, a ribbon circled in the form of a Q and a phoenix symbolizing continual rebirth.

Mercury’s unique musical style blended pop, disco, rockabilly, and operatic influences. He wrote many of Queen’s most popular songs, including “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” “We Are the Champions” and his elaborate masterpiece, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Mercury was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the UK Music Hall of Fame. He ranks 18 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of 100 greatest singers of all time. “Bohemian Rhapsody,” one of the best-selling singles of all time, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004.

Mercury died at 44 of AIDS-related illness.