I wrote a song once, or co-wrote it if I am to be completely truthful. It was a cabaret number, a comedy song and a list song. There are only two kinds of songs, should you be interested to know, and these are ‘lists’ and ‘stories’. Think of any song and you will be able to put it into one of those two categories, honestly. But I am already straying from the point.

The point of mentioning that song was to bring in its subject matter which was, famous gay people of history. I am sure my co-writer would not mind me sharing some of the lyrics (in italics) with you as I run through some of the more unexpected gay people from the past.

There is often doubt over far back historical characters and their sexuality. Examples:

‘Frederick the Great, Peter the Great, Alexander the Great, not one of them straight.’

And sometimes there is room for a lot of speculation. I just checked out a list on a site and it has Saladin the Sultan of Egypt and Syria listed as a famous gay man. Famous for sure, but how do they know? Where’s the evidence? The site did have a list of sources actually, but my point here is that history can quickly become myth, so to say for 100% certainty that, for example, Alexander was gay, is to make assumptions based on ancient chatter. To be certain or our famous GLB folk we need to be more up to date:

‘Herman Melville, and Marcel Proust – and all the boys that Hadrian the first seduced.’

I know Hadrian wasn’t that recent, but it’s a fun rhyme for Proust who, let’s face it, could do with some jollying up. Also on the list was Cole Porter, no surprises there except he was also married, but that’s what some gay men did in those days, and perhaps he really was bisexual. (And, as an aside, if you want clear examples of list and story songs then look at Cole Porter, the master of the list song: Let’s do it, You’re the top, I get a kick out of you, and more or less anything from Anything Goes.)

‘Kenneth Anger loved the men he’d fetter, David Hockney likes his men much wetter.’

Also on that site and its list were Andy Warhol, Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde, and you are probably not surprised to see these great people listed. But what about some of the others?

‘Edward the second, Richard the Second, James the first, it’s been reckoned.’

Pope Julius III (1550 – 1555), Marie Antoinette, Pope Benedict IX (1032 – 1044), Pope John XII (655 – 964), the list goes on, and is not restricted to Popes or aristocracy who lost their heads.

‘There’s William Shakespeare, and Marlow too, and Sophocles, Euripides to name a few.’

But what I did notice from this list, and the list we came up with for our song, is how many talented people there were. Of course there is no reason why GLB folk should not be talented, I didn’t mean it like that, and there are thousands of talented straight people from history, but some of the greats are here – I mean the really greats. From Alexander and the others who were actually called ‘Great’ to the painter of the Sistine chapel, Michelangelo, the inventor of economic theories in the 20th century, John Maynard Keyes and the inventor of just about everything else, Leonardo de Vinci.

‘…And Gertrude Stein, whose brownies would have fattened Ida Rubenstein
And who can forget Divine? That’s what John Waters taught us…’

‘Hans Christian Anderson, Walt Whitman and Virginia Woolf,
And that’s not all
There’s Lady Una Troubridge, and Radclyffe Hall.’

So it seems to me, that whatever way you look at it, being gay means that you are in good company. Such good company that it makes you wonder who the straight folk have to be proud of.