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Beyond Brideshead: The Male Homoerotics of 1930s Oxford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2020

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Abstract

Looking beyond the notorious “Brideshead” aesthetes and homoeroticism of 1920s Oxford, this article explores the queer sensibilities of the university's male undergraduates and their associates through the 1930s. Steadily through the decade, Oxford's unique brand of queer aestheticism and same-sex love affairs became embroiled with wider debates about the hegemony of socialism and communism and the supposed degeneracy of standards at Oxford. At the same time, the assimilation of medicalized concepts of perversion and homosexuality increasingly made Oxford's aesthetes and same-sex love affairs objects of critical scrutiny, effeminophobia, and homophobia. For many of the university's queer male undergraduates, the Oxford University Dramatic Society provided a safe haven and a platform for queer expression both in Oxford and beyond. A group of images by the Russian émigré photographer Cyril Arapoff provides further insights into the male homoerotics of 1930s Oxford. Situated within the context of Arapoff's life in the city between 1933 and 1939, his extraordinary photographs of nude and seminude young men offer glimpses into the queer lives and loves at Oxford in a period when such experiences were rarely articulated in written form. The images include the spaces the young men inhabited and their interconnections to London's vibrantly queer dance and theater scene. Such insights help establish more firmly interwar Oxford as an important hub of queer modernism, with national and international import for the course of modern queer history.

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Journal of British Studies , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 821 - 856
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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies, 2020

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References

1 Waugh, Evelyn, Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (London, 1945)Google Scholar. Works, mainly biographical, that offer useful studies of the set and further references include Byrne, Paula, Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead (London, 2009), 44–65Google Scholar; Taylor, D. J., Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation, 1918–1940 (London, 2007), 203–22Google Scholar; Tamagne, Florence, A History of Homosexuality in Europe: Berlin, London, Paris, 1919–1939 (New York, 2004), 132–40Google Scholar; Knox, James, Robert Byron (London, 2003), 54–79Google Scholar; Wheen, Francis, Tom Driberg: His Life and Indiscretions (London, 1990), 36–57Google Scholar; Carpenter, Humphrey, The Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and His Friends (London, 1989)Google Scholar. I am currently working on a book-length account of Oxford's interwar queer history, provisionally titled “Beyond Brideshead: Queer Oxford, 1919–1945.”

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5 Ackroyd, Peter, Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day (London, 2017)Google Scholar; Avery, Simon and Graham, Katherine M., eds., Sex, Time and Place: Queer Histories of London, c. 1850 to the Present (London, 2016)Google Scholar; Houlbrook, Matt, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918–1957 (Chicago, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cook, Matt, London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885–1914 (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar. For Historic England's momentous 2016 Pride of Place project and the National Trust's equally momentous 2017 Prejudice and Pride project, see, respectively, https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/lgbtq-heritage-project and https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/exploring-lgbtq-history-at-national-trust-places; Oram, Alison and Cook, Matt, Prejudice and Pride: Celebrating LGBTQ Heritage (Rotherham, 2017)Google Scholar. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Queer beyond London, a two-year collaboration of Birkbeck College, University of London, and Leeds Beckett University (2016–2018), explored histories of sexual identity and communities in Brighton, Leeds, Manchester, and Plymouth from around 1965 (http://queerbeyondlondon.com/about). See also Smith, Helen, Masculinity, Class and Same-Sex Desire in Industrial England, 1895–1957 (Basingstoke, 2015)Google Scholar; Shopland, Norena, Forbidden Lives: LGBT Histories from Wales (Bridgend, 2017)Google Scholar; Davidson, Roger and Davis, Gayle, The Sexual State: Sexuality and Scottish Governance, 1950–80 (Edinburgh, 2012)Google Scholar. Informative studies of queer localities beyond Britain include Beachy, Robert, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (New York, 2014)Google Scholar; Cook, Matt and Evans, Jennifer V., eds., Queer Cities, Queer Cultures: Europe since 1945 (London, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Higgs, David, ed., Queer Sites: Gay Urban Histories since 1600 (London, 1999)Google Scholar; Kaiser, Charles, The Gay Metropolis, 1940–1996 (London, 1998)Google Scholar; Chauncey, George, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York, 1994)Google Scholar.

6 Linkof, Ryan, “‘These Young Men Who Come Down from Oxford and Write Gossip’: Society Gossip, Homosexuality and the Logic of Revelation in the Interwar Popular Press,” in British Queer History: New Approaches and Perspectives, ed. Lewis, Brian (Manchester, 2013), 109–33Google Scholar. Hitherto, historians’ interest in Oxford as an important British queer locality has largely been restricted to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See, for example, Rousseau, George, “The Kiss of Death and Cabal of Dons: Blackmail and Grooming in Georgian Oxford,” Journal of Historical Sociology 21, no. 4 (2008): 368–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rousseau, George, “Privilege, Power and Sexual Abuse in Georgian Oxford,” in Children and Sexuality: From the Greeks to the Great War, ed. Rousseau, George (Basingstoke, 2007), 142–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar (see also response by Tim Hitchcock, in Rousseau, Children and Sexuality, 166–69); McManners, John, All Souls and the Shipley Case, 1808–1810 (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar; Dowling, Linda, Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford (Ithaca, 1994)Google Scholar; Norton, Rictor, Mother Clap's Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England, 1700–1830, 2nd ed. (Stroud, 2006), 270–81, 369–70Google Scholar. See also Levsen, Sonja, “Constructing Elite Identities: University Students, Military Masculinity and the Consequences of the Great War in Britain and Germany,” Past and Present, no. 198 (2008): 147–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deslandes, Paul R., Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850–1920 (Bloomington, 2005)Google Scholar.

7 The homoerotics of female lives and loves at Oxford warrant a separate study; indeed, the experiences and cultural impact of female undergraduates at Oxford more generally deserve greater attention in historiography, but see Robinson, Jane, Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education (London, 2009)Google Scholar. The autobiographical account of Michael Dillon's (Society of Oxford Home-Students [St. Anne's Society from 1942; St. Anne's College from 1952], 1934–1938) time at Oxford (as Laura Dillon) offers a rich source of material about what it was like to be a trans male student at Oxford during the 1930s. See Dillon, Michael/Jivaka, Lobzang, Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions, ed. Lau, Jacob and Partridge, Cameron (New York, 2017), 74–87Google Scholar. See also Kennedy, Pagan, The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution (New York, 2007), 24–35Google Scholar; Hodgkinson, Liz, Michael, Née Laura (London, 1989), 39–50Google Scholar. Although Jan Morris (Christ Church, 1949–1951) was an undergraduate (as James Morris) during the postwar period, she arrived in Oxford in 1936 to attend the Cathedral Choir School of Christ Church. See Morris, Jan, Conundrum (London, 1974), 16–24Google Scholar.

8 Houlbrook, Queer London, 79–80; Oram, Alison, Her Husband Was a Woman! Women's Gender-Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture (Abingdon, 2007), 109–27Google Scholar.

9 Houlbrook, Queer London, 95–96.

10 Morris, Conundrum, 17.

11 Among the general histories that include narratives of Oxford through the twentieth century are Brockliss, L. W. B., The University of Oxford: A History (Oxford, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Evans, G. R., The University of Oxford: A New History (London, 2010)Google Scholar. Four especially valuable studies focusing on the 1930s are Ugolini, Laura, “Clothes and the Modern Man in 1930s Oxford,” Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 4, no. 4 (2000): 427–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Renton, Dave, Red Shirts and Black: Fascists and Anti-fascists in Oxford in the 1930s (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar; Haapala, Taru, “The Oxford Union Debate on War in 1933: Rhetoric, Representation, Political Action,” Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory 20, no. 1 (2017): 68–84Google Scholar; Ceadel, Martin, “The ‘King and Country’ Debate, 1933: Student Politics, Pacifism and the Dictators,” Historical Journal 22, no. 2 (1979): 397–422CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Terence Greenidge, Degenerate Oxford? A Critical Study of Modern University Life (London, 1930), 91.

13 Greenidge, Degenerate Oxford?, 91, 94.

14 Greenidge, 92.

15 See, for example, Degenerate Oxford? A Critical Study of Modern University Life, unsigned review of Degenerate Oxford?, by Terence Greenidge, Times Literary Supplement, February 13, 1930, 114; O., O. V., “Oxford,” review of Degenerate Oxford? A Critical Study of Modern University Life, by Terence Greenidge, Oxford Outlook 10, no. 51 (February 1930): 460–61Google Scholar; Evelyn Waugh, review of Degenerate Oxford? A Critical Study of Modern University Life, by Terence Greenidge, Fortnightly Review 133 (March 1930): 423–24; C. B. Hobhouse, “The Dimmer Side of University Life,” review of Degenerate Oxford? A Critical Study of Modern University Life, by Terence Greenidge, Cherwell, March 1, 1930, 134; “Oxford under Criticism,” unsigned review of review of Degenerate Oxford? A Critical Study of Modern University Life, by Terence Greenidge, Journal of Education, no. 57 (1930): 380.

16 Renton, Red Shirts and Black, 3–6.

17 See Haapala, “Oxford Union Debate,” 68.

18 “The White Flag of Youth,” Daily Express, 13 February 1933, 10.

19 Joseph Banister, letter to the editor, Isis, 23 February 1933, 8.

20 That said, it is known that while he was an undergraduate at Oxford, W. H. Auden (Christ Church, 1925–1928) was deeply influenced by reading Freud and sought the help of a psychiatrist in an attempt to change his sexual orientation. See, for example, Davenport-Hines, Richard, Auden (London, 1995)Google Scholar, especially 67–74. Studies of sexology that include substantial coverage of interwar Britain, all useful for further references, include Weston, Janet, Medicine, the Penal System and Sexual Crimes in England, 1919–1960s: Diagnosing Deviance (London, 2018)Google Scholar; Hall, Lesley A., “The British Society of the Study of Sex Psychology,” in Sex, Time and Place: Queer Histories of London, c.1850 to the Present, ed. Avery, Simon and M., Katherine Graham (London, 2016), 133–48Google Scholar; Bauer, Heike, English Literary Sexology: Translations of Inversion, 1860–1930 (Basingstoke, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crozier, Ivan, “‘All the World's a Stage’: Dora Russell, Norman Haire, and the 1929 London World League for Sexual Reform Congress,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 12, no. 1 (2003): 16–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waters, Chris, “Havelock Ellis, Sigmund Freud and the State: Discourses of Homosexual Identity in Interwar Britain,” in Sexology in Culture: Labelling Bodies and Desires, ed. Bland, Lucy and Doan, Laura (Cambridge, 1998), 165–79Google Scholar. Modern British sexology is also the subject of my doctoral thesis, for Oxford Brookes University, in progress and currently titled “Evolution's Closet: Queer Science in Britain, 1871–1957.”

21 Greenidge, Degenerate Oxford?, 91.

22 Greenidge, 91.

23 Greenidge, 91.

24 Greenidge, 91.

25 Connell, John, “Purveyors of Sex-Bunk,” in Red Rags: Essays of Hate from Oxford, ed. Comyns, Richard Carr (London, 1933), 25–43Google Scholar.

26 John Connell, “Psycho-Analysis or Hard Labour?,” Week-End Review, 21 November 1931, 645–46, at 645. Hull's case is discussed in McLaren, Angus, The Trials of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries, 1870–1930 (Chicago, 1997), 207–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Connell, “Purveyors,” 40.

28 Connell, 40.

29 Connell, 41, 43.

30 Connell, 34.

31 T. H. Harrisson, Letter to Oxford (Wyck, [1933]), 27–28. The work, undoubtedly aping Red Rags, was published under the imprint of the Hate Press.

32 Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, 99.

33 Quoted in Howard, Anthony, Crossman: The Pursuit of Power (London, 1990), 24Google Scholar.

34 Clark, Adrian and Dronfield, Jeremy, Queer Saint: The Cultured Life of Peter Watson, Who Shook Twentieth-Century Art and Shocked High Society (London, 2015), 31Google Scholar. There are no university or college records of Watson's sending down. He was gone by 23 January 1930 when Nancy Mitford wrote of the matter in a letter to Mark Ogilvie-Grant (Clark and Dronfield, Queer Saint, 38).

35 Lees-Milne, James, Holy Dread: Diaries, 1982–1984, ed. Bloch, Michael (London, 2001), 79Google Scholar; Bloch, Michael, James Lees-Milne: The Life (London, 2009), 48Google Scholar.

36 Lees-Milne, James, Deep Romantic Chasm: Diaries, 1979–1981, ed. Bloch, Michael (London, 2000), 136–37Google Scholar. See also Bloch, James Lees-Milne, 48.

37 Some individuals, including John Betjeman (Magdalen College, 1925–1928) and Emlyn Williams (Christ Church, 1923–1926), had been involved with the society during the 1920s, but student drama was not an activity pursued by Oxford's queer aesthetes as a matter of course until after the “Brideshead generation” had left. For a useful study of the history of the society up to 1985, see Carpenter, Humphrey, OUDS: A Centenary History of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, 1885–1985 (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar.

38 Cook, London, especially 28–29.

39 Houlbrook, Queer London, especially 56–57.

40 Morley, Sheridan, John G: The Authorized Biography of John Gielgud (London, 2001), 84Google Scholar.

41 MacNeice, Louis, “When I Was Twenty-One,” in The Saturday Book, vol. 21, ed. Hadfield, John (London, 1961), 230–39Google Scholar, at 232.

42 From the perspective of Oxford's queer history, First Episode is intriguing, indubitably a product of Rattigan's undergraduate experiences. See Michael Darlow, Terence Rattigan: The Man and His Work (London, 2000), especially 61–84.

43 In a private letter, Robertson Davies (Balliol College, 1935–1938) described Smokers as “the most obscene show in England.” Davies, who stage-managed the revue in March 1936, further described how, after the third and final performance, the “homos” were “in a great state, and one silly kid was sold under my nose . . . for thirty shillings—a great joke, but the infant was anxious to fulfil his part of the bargain.” Judith Skelton Grant, Robertson Davies: Man of Myth (Toronto, 1994), 174.

44 Strangely, Darlow and others spell the surname of Rattigan's alter ego as “Coutigan”; that this was not how it was considered at the time is apparent from its spelling in the Cherwell. See, for example, “Lady Diana Cootigan Judging the Poultry Show,” cartoon, Cherwell, 4 February 1933, 67; “Lady Diana Cootigan was Prostrate,” cartoon, Cherwell, 29 April 1933, 6. One edition of the Isis reproduces a photograph of Rattigan, Byng, and others taken at a party at Canterbury House (“Canters”) on King Edward Street, where Rattigan had been resident as an undergraduate. “Douglas Byng at Canterbury House Party,” photograph, Isis, 7 March 1934, 2.

45 Drabble, , Angus Wilson: A Biography (London: 1995), 74Google Scholar.

46 Wilson, Angus, “Angus Wilson,” in My Oxford, ed. Thwaite, Ann (London, 1977), 89–108Google Scholar, at 107.

47 Drabble, Angus Wilson, 70.

48 Wilson, “Angus Wilson,” 96.

49 Wilson, 96.

50 Wilson, 101.

51 Drabble, Angus Wilson, 71–72.

52 Drabble, 71–72.

53 Jivani, Alkarim, It's Not Unusual: A History of Lesbian and Gay Britain in the Twentieth Century (London, 1997), 20Google Scholar. A short unpublished memoir of Banbury's time at Oxford, “An Inglorious Oxford Career,” written around 1996, is in his file at Hertford College. Among his reminiscences he wrote, “I was regarded with suspicion by most of the undergraduates in Hertford as an ‘aesthete,’ and I think now that I was lucky not to have been debagged and thrown into the Cherwell by the ‘hearties,’ as was one of my friends.”

54 John Brown, “Oxford Faces Realities,” Shields Daily News, 12 May 1933, 7. See also John Brown, I Was a Tramp (London, [1934]), 239: “The young æsthetes, for which Oxford had long been notorious, still abounded, and were easily recognizable by their effeminacy and languid manners. Some of them were writing poetry, but little of this ever found its way into print.”

55 See, for example, Philip Mann, The Dandy at Dusk: Taste and Melancholy in the Twentieth Century (London, 2017), 155.

56 Unfortunately, there is a gap in the Oxford University Archives’ holding of proctors’ charge books (which record details of offender, offense, and penalties) for the period 1929–1936, and no other records relate precisely why Roger left Oxford in 1932.

57 Neil Munro Roger file, Ruskin School of Art Archive, University of Oxford.

58 Richard Rumbold, Little Victims: A Novel (London, 1933). Student novels, invariably involving stories set in public schools or Oxbridge colleges, were a popular genre throughout the interwar era. Another undergraduate author who included queer tropes in his novels is Edward Tangye Lean (University College, 1929–1933); see, for example, his Storm in Oxford (London, 1932). On Lean, see Peter Gilliver, “The First Inkling: Edward Tangye Lean,” Journal of Inklings Studies 6, no. 2 (2016): 63–77.

59 On the Fortune Press, see Drewey Wayne Gunn, Gay Novels of Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, 1881–1981: A Reader's Guide (Jefferson, 2014), 59–66; Timothy d'Arch Smith, R. A. Caton and the Fortune Press: A Memoir and a Hand-List (London, 1983). In the same year as Little Victims, Caton published The Magnificent by Terence Greenidge, a gay-themed novel concerning an Oxford undergraduate who aspires to become an actor.

60 William Plomer, ed., A Message in Code: The Diary of Richard Rumbold, 1932–60 (London, 1964); Richard Lumford [Richard Rumbold], My Father's Son (London, 1949). See also Stephen Bourne, Fighting Proud: The Untold Story of the Gay Men Who Served in Two World Wars (London, 2017), 91–95.

61 Lumford, My Father's Son, 158.

62 Montague Summers, The Galanty Show (London, 1980), 241.

63 “Archbishop Bans Novel of Undergraduate Excommunicated at Oxford: Refusal of the Sacrament; To Appeal to the Pope,” Daily Telegraph, 12 June 1933, 14. Among many other local, national and international reports, see “Communion Denied to Author of a Criticized British Novel,” New York Times, 12 June 1933, 1; “Author Refused the Sacrament: ‘Public Humiliation,’” Manchester Guardian, 12 June 1933, 12; “Communion Ban on Undergraduate Author: Will Appeal to Pope on ‘Offensive’ Book,” Daily Herald, 17 June 1933, 9.

64 For just some of the jibes and cartoons in the Cherwell poking fun at Rumbold and Little Victims through 1933 into 1934, see “Conversation of the Spring,” Cherwell, 11 February 1933, 77; J. S. B., “Little Victims,” Cherwell, 18 February 1933, 101; “Bed-Time Story,” cartoon, Cherwell, 18 February 1933, 103; “Little Victim,” cartoon, Cherwell, 25 February 1933, 126; “Little Victim,” cartoon, Cherwell, 4 March 1933, 151; “Loss to Drama,” Cherwell, 29 April 1933, 4; “Wasted Sympathy,” Cherwell, 6 May 1933, 31; P. E. D., “Little Vixens,” Cherwell, 14 October 1933, 3; Farquharson and Malcolm, “‘Have You Read “Little Victims”’?,” cartoon, Cherwell, 3 February 1934, 67. See also Alan Jenkins, The Thirties (London, 1976), 67; Harrisson, Letter to Oxford, 28.

65 P. M. D., “Is Oxford Degenerate,” Cherwell, 26 October 1935, 27.

66 Keith Briant, Oxford Limited (London, 1937), 69.

67 See Michael Seaborne, “Cyril Arapoff: A Short Biography,” British Journal of Photography, no. 127 (1980): 1192–93; Michael Seaborne, Cyril Arapoff: London in the Thirties (London, 1988); Malcolm Graham, “An Acute Perception,” Oxford Times, 9 March 2009, https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/4187302.acute-perception/. See also E. V. Konyukhova, “Kyril Semeonovich Arapov,” Кирилл Семенович Арапов [Kyril Semeonovitch Arapov],” Iskusstvo i arhitektura Russkogo zarubezh'ja, Искусство и архитектура Русского зарубежья, no. 5 October 2012, http://www.artrz.ru/menu/1805200013/1805201709.html.

68 For the Cocteau connection, see Arapoff's obituary in the Times: “Mr Cyril Arapoff,” Times (London): 27 October 1976, 18.

69 Useful English-language studies of New Objectivity include Stephanie Barron and Sabine Eckmann, eds., New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919–1933 (Munich, 2015); Ralf Grüttemeier, Klaus Beekman, and Ben Rebel, eds., Neue Sachlichkeit and Avant-Garde (Amsterdam, 2013); Sergiusz Michalski, New Objectivity: Painting, Graphic Art and Photography in Weimar Germany, 1919–1933 (Köln, 1994).

70 For the Renger-Patzsch connection, see Arapoff to Renger-Patzsch, 18 December 1933, Albert Renger-Patzsch Papers, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

71 “[We are delighted to hear . . .],” Cherwell, 1 June 1935, 100. For some other notices and reviews in Oxford's student newspapers, see “[Mr. Cyril Arapoff . . .],” Cherwell, 17 November 1934, 100; “Photography!,” Isis, 12 June 1935, 4; J. L. I., “Cyril Arapoff,” Cherwell, 30 November 1935, 159; “Mr. Cyril Arapoff's Exhibition,” Isis, 11 November 1936, 3; George Galitzine, “Hans Feibusch and Cyril Arapoff,” Isis, 18 November 1936, 10; J. L. I., “Arapoff,” Cherwell, 21 November 1936, 132; Mark Allen, “Exhibition of Photographs by Cyril Arapoff at Ryman's,” Isis, 1 December 1937, 9; Anon, “Arapoff,” Cherwell, 4 December 1937, 188; B. G.-S., “Review: Cyril Arapoff,” Cherwell, 25 November 1939, 91.

72 In Seaborne's words, “The only piece of information I (deliberately) excluded from the introduction is the fact that Arapoff was gay and, seemingly, had a reputation for being so.” Private communication, 19 July 2018.

73 C. G. Holme, ed., Modern Photography: The Studio Annual of Camera Art, 1935–1936 (London, 1936), 15.

74 On the history of the society to 1985, see Carpenter, OUDS.

75 At the time of writing, around 10 percent of the collection had been digitized and made available at the Oxfordshire County Council website (http://pictureoxon.com/), where prints and digital images (for private use) can be ordered. The whole collection will be made available in due course.

76 Dominic Janes, Visions of Queer Martyrdom: From John Henry Newman to Derek Jarman (Chicago, 2015).

77 I consulted widely on this question as I viewed the various collections of Arapoff's photographs. The archivists I spoke to agreed unanimously that a significant gender bias is evident in his work.

78 Cyril Arapoff, “How I Make My Exhibition Pictures: Methods and Ideals of Well-Known Pictorial Workers,” Amateur Photographer and Cinematographer, no. 287 (26 June 1935): 600.

79 See James Gardiner, A Class Apart: The Private Pictures of Montague Glover (London, 1992). Useful historical studies of the homoerotics of photography include Lifshitz, Sébastien, The Invisibles: Vintage Portraits of Love and Pride. Gay Couples in the Early Twentieth Century (New York, 2014)Google Scholar; Ellenzweig, Allen, The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images from Durieu/Delacroix to Mapplethorpe (New York, 1992)Google Scholar; Borhan, Pierre, Men for Men: Homoeroticism and Male Homosexuality in the History of Photography, 1840–2006 (London, 2007)Google Scholar; Ibson, John, Picturing Men: A Century of Male Relationships in Everyday American Photography (Chicago, 2002)Google Scholar; Gardiner, James, Who's a Pretty Boy Then? One Hundred and Fifty Years of Gay Life in Pictures (London, 1997)Google Scholar; and Waugh, Thomas, Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall (New York, 1996)Google Scholar. Other significant English-language studies of queer visual culture include Clare Barlow, ed., Queer British Art, 1861–1967 (London, 2017); Alex Pilcher, A Queer Little History of Art (London: 2017); Lord, Catherine and Meyer, Richards, eds., Art and Queer Culture (London, 2013)Google Scholar; Christopher Reed, Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas (New York, 2011); Fernandez, Dominique, A Hidden Love: Art and Homosexuality, trans. Radzinowicz, David (London, [2001] 2002)Google Scholar; Saslow, James M., Pictures and Passions: A History of Homosexuality in the Visual Arts (New York, 1999)Google Scholar; Cooper, Emmanuel, The Sexual Perspective: Homosexuality and Art in the Last 100 Years in the West, 2nd ed. (London, 1994)Google Scholar.

80 See, for example, Kaye, Richard A., “‘A Splendid Readiness for Death’: T. S. Eliot, the Homosexual Cult of St. Sebastian, and World War I,” Modernism/Modernity 6, no. 2 (1999): 107–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richard A. Kaye, “Losing His Religion: Saint Sebastian as Contemporary Gay Martyr,” in Outlooks: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities and Visual Cultures, ed. Peter Horne and Reina Lewis (London, 1996), 86–105; Saslow, James, “The Tenderest Lover: St. Sebastian in Renaissance Painting: A Proposed Homoerotic Iconology for North Italian Art, 1450–1550,” Gai Saber: Journal of the Gay Academic Union 1, no. 1 (1977): 58–66Google Scholar; Dynes, Wayne, “Putting St. Sebastian to the Question,” Gai Saber: Journal of the Gay Academic Union 1, no. 2 (1977): 150–51Google Scholar. On Waugh's use of the name in Brideshead, see Byrne, Mad World, 309–10.

81 Albert Courmes, Saint Sébastien (1934); Marsden Hartley, Sustained Comedy (1939).

82 See, for example, Ramsay Burt, The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle, Sexualities, 2nd ed. (London, 2007); Peter Stoneley, A Queer History of the Ballet (London, 2007); Alastair Macaulay, “Gender, Sexuality, Community,” in Following Sir Fred's Steps: Ashton's Legacy, ed. Stephanie Jordan and Andrée Grau (London, 1996), 115–26. For an interesting skit, see “London Fauna: No. 2, The Ballet Boy,” cartoon, Isis, 6 February 1929, 6.

83 See Burt, Male Dancer, 42.

84 Richard Buckle, The Adventures of a Ballet Critic (London, 1953), 24.

85 Buckle, Adventures, 24.

86 It also appears that Arapoff and John Betjeman knew each other. In a letter to Buckle dated 24 November 1939, Betjeman wrote, “I wish I had known Cyril Arapoff earlier.” Candida Lycett Green, ed., John Betjeman: Letters, vol. 1, 1926–1951 (London, 1994), 249.

87 Richard Buckle, In the Wake of Diaghilev: Autobiography 2 (London, 1982), 34–35.

88 Buckle, Adventures, 46.

89 The potential for older men, most likely former Oxonians, to visit Oxford to cruise the male undergraduates is suggested in remarks by Briant in Oxford Limited, simultaneously evidencing earlier queer mores at Oxford and their decline through the 1930s. Briant wrote,

The number of middle-aged and elderly homosexuals who either live in or near Oxford, or have the habit of popping up from London for the week-end, is dwindling. It is not very long ago that such figures were always to be seen at parties, keeping a watchful eye open for an impressionable, good-looking young man fresh from his public school. Not that they are averse to the more experienced type of undergraduate. But the former is easier game. He is tactfully complimented, plied with more drinks than he can hold and then taken out to dinner. Naturally, he is flattered by the attention of an older man. The latter is usually Major Fitz-Blank or the Hon. St. Blank. Their numbers have decreased, but they are still to be found at parties or standing in bars looking “quietly distinguished.” (Briant, Oxford Limited, 69–70)

90 Houlbrook, Queer London, 95.

91 See, for example, Jongwoo Jeremy Kim, “Naturalism, Labour and Homoerotic Desire: Henry Scott Tuke,” in British Queer History: New Approaches and Perspectives, ed. Brian Lewis (Manchester, 2013), 39–62.

92 See, for example, Vajdon Sohaili, “‘The Mirror-Like Sea’: A Bloomsbury Vision of Same-Sex Desire in Duncan Grant's Bathing, 1911,” British Art Studies, no. 4 (2016), https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-04/vsohaili. Other visual representations of Parson's Pleasure providing a good sense of the all-male physicality of the locality include the photographs of Henry Taunt (in the collections at Oxfordshire History Centre), as do the artworks Parson's Pleasure (1894) by Lancelot Speed; The Bathing Huts, or “Parson's Pleasure” (1903) by John Fulleylove; An Afternoon at Parson's Pleasure, Oxford (1938) by Stanley Roy Badmin; and Parson's Pleasure (ca. 1944) by William Roberts.

93 See, for example, List, Herbert, Junge Männer (London, 1988)Google Scholar.

94 See Hastings, Gerard, Keith Vaughan: The Photographs (Pagham, 2013)Google Scholar; Vaughan, Keith, Figure and Ground: Drawings, Prints and Photographs, 1935–62, ed. Cruise, Colin (Bristol, 2013)Google Scholar.

95 See Gardiner, Class Apart, 66–81.

96 Michael Davidson, The World, the Flesh and Myself (London, 1962), 1.

97 Davidson, The World, the Flesh and Myself, 148.

98 That said, Ian Harvey indicates that Dundas maintained a presence at Parson's Pleasure, describing him as the facility's “great high priest.” Harvey, Ian, To Fall Like Lucifer (London, 1971), 30Google Scholar.

99 “P. P.,” cartoon, Cherwell, 10 June 1933, 151.

100 Angus, “Ancient History,” cartoon, Cherwell, 11 February 1933, 80; Angus, “‘Shall I Compare Thee . . .,’” cartoon, Cherwell, 4 March 1933, 152; Angus, “Shades of the Prison House,” cartoon, Cherwell, 11 March 1933, 172; Angus, “Comrades in Distress,” cartoon, Cherwell, 29 April 1933, 7; Angus, “Biology,” cartoon, Cherwell, 13 May 1933, 55; Angus, “Solitude,” cartoon, Cherwell, 27 May 1933, 103.

101 Advertisement, “Road v River Rivalry . . !,” Isis, 8 June 1938, 10–11.

102 Davidson, The World, the Flesh and Myself, 121–22.

103 George Townsend is currently working on a cultural history of Parson's Pleasure at Birkbeck, University of London.

104 Gregorio Prieto, Students: Oxford-Cambridge; Twenty Drawings (London, 1938).

105 Doan, Laura, Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women's Experience of Modern War (Chicago, 2013), 198CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 Asked about his time at Oxford, Eric Bentley told me he did not feel that he could contribute to my project, but we maintained a correspondence, largely about his play Lord Alfred's Lover (1981) and Oscar Wilde. It is evident that he expressed what he had to say about sexuality in that play.