5000 Years of Queer History

Amongst its pages, there are many familiar names—Oscar Wilde, Quentisn Crisp, Sappho, James Baldwin, Freddie Mercury — but also many we might not expect: Florence Nightingale, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, J. Edgar Hoover, Eleanor Roosevelt, Tchaikovsky, Greta Garbo, Richard the Lionheart, even Abraham Lincoln,  along with 1000 other stories of artists, generals, politicians, kings, despots and many more figures drawn from 5000 years of hidden culture.

Keith Stern came to the Bureau to talk about his extraordinary encyclopaedia ‘Queers in History’, what drove him to write it, and why it matters.

The book is more than a who’s-who of queer life —it’s a challenge to the official version of the past, a reminder of how history gets made, unmade, and remade,  depending on who’s telling the stories, inviting us to consider how queerness has always existed, and has contributed to the culture.

And we get into the subject of whether Gandalf was Queer - yes, we really do…

---

If you can contribute to this crazy endeavour, join our Patreon HERE

Thank you to everyone who’s signed up to support the show —that means a lot. We have chosen not to carry ads here; it simply wouldn’t sit right with the spirit of the Bureau. But that does mean we can benefit from your support, in whatever form that takes, not just financial.  

Stephen