Blog

At the end of this very real annus terribilis, I want to say a few words to you, our loyal readers and attendees.  Above all, thanks!  Thanks for keeping Oscar Wilde Tours alive by reading our blog, attending our Zoom tours, watching our YouTube videos, contributing to our fundraisers—in short, for being a fabulously loyal community.  When the pandemic hit the US, in March, it seemed likely to kill the...Read More

In a little over 100 years, between 1861 and 1967, Britain went from punishing male homosexuality with the death penalty to decriminalisation across the vast majority of the country. That may seem like a glacial pace but when we consider the World Health Organisation didn’t officially declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder until 1992, the UK seems ahead of its time. One of the easiest ways to trace the societal...Read More

Paris is one of the world’s great LGBTQ history cities—and Père Lachaise cemetery is possibly Paris’s richest LGBTQ history site!  How did it get that way?  Père Lachaise was the first garden cemetery—a trend in the 19th century that led to the creation of London’s so-called Magnificent Seven, New York’s Green-wood, and Boston’s Mount Auburn.  The garden cemeteries were meant as a kind of public park, and one of the...Read More

One of the great things about England is its grand, historic houses, what the British call “stately homes.”  Today’s post is about two castles with an LGBTQ past.  And who better to write about LGBTQ England and its Queerest Stately Homes than Nick Collinson and Dan Vo?  Nick is the founder of the LGBTQ working group at English Heritage, and Dan, who developed the well-known LGBTQ tours at the Victoria...Read More

Penises in art are a bigger theme than you might think.  After all, what is the number one question people ask in the Greek and Roman collection of any museum?  There is no competition:  why the penises in Classical art are smaller than real-life average adult penises.  And the second is:  whether Christians really broke off the penises that are missing from so many male nude statues.Read More