Huw Lemmey, Bad Gays, 2023

‘Bad Gays’ collects the lives of those gay characters we would struggle to call champions of LGBT+ rights: the liars, the powerful, the careerists, the criminals. From Alexander the Great to Ernst Röhm, from Yukio Mishima to Lawrence of Arabia, our history is littered with them. Every minority that struggles to emerge from marginalisation, for recognition or for survival itself, sooner or later comes to terms with the question of who should be the face of its battle, which voices and perspectives within the group should be highlighted to adequately reflect its existence. The authors of this book evade this question to ask an even more acute one: what untold facets does queer history have? Why does everyone remember Oscar Wilde and no one remembers Bosie, the man for whom he went to the bar? Perhaps we have reached the point where it is also necessary to talk about the bad gays, the ruthless and cruel gays, for the picture to be complete. Rarely would we mention the homosexuality of a Nazi general or a treacherous FBI agent, yet their lives were as affected by their sexual orientation as those of Alan Turing or Audre Lorde. Lemmey and Miller have reconstructed the fourteen incredible lives of some of history’s most controversial figures to unhinge traditional clichés of sexual identity.