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Jeremy Wolfenden (26 June 1934, England – 28 December 1965) was a foreign correspondent and British spy at the height of the Cold War.The son of John Wolfenden, chair of the Wolfenden Report which recommended the legalisation of male homosexual acts in Britain, Jeremy Wolfenden was himself homosexual. He was regarded by others of his generation as a leader and a man of distinct individualism. He won a scholarship to Eton where he was known as 'cleverest boy in England', then to his father's alma mater Magdalen College, Oxford, where he obtained a first class degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He subsequently became a Prize Fellow of All Souls. His Finals examiner at Oxford, after giving him eight alphas, wrote: "He wrote as though it were all beneath him; he wrote as though it were all such a waste of his time"
Wolfenden was recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) before becoming the Daily Telegraph foreign correspondent in Moscow where he indulged in his twin passions for sex and alcohol and was eventually compromised by the KGB. He struck up friendships with Guy Burgess, the British defector, and Martina Browne, the nanny employed by Ruari and Janet Chisholm, who were working for SIS and were instrumental in the defection of Oleg Penkovsky — a colonel in Soviet military intelligence — who was responsible for disabusing the Kennedy administration of the myth that the 'missile gap' was in the Soviet's favour. Wolfenden subsequently came under pressure from both SIS and the KGB while in Moscow and swapped roles with the Telegraph's Washington correspondent, where he married Martina Browne.
He died aged 31 in what appeared to be suspicious circumstances in Washington. It was claimed he had fainted in the bathroom, cracked his head against the washbasin and died of a cerebral haemorrhage. It is now thought likely that he died of liver failure brought on by his excessive drinking.
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Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Wolfenden
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More LGBT History at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Gay Classics
Léon Samoilovitch Bakst (10 May 1866 – 28 December 1924) was a Russian painter and scene- and costume designer. He was a member of the Sergei Diaghilev circle and the Ballets Russes, for which he designed exotic, richly coloured sets and costumes. (Picture: Bakst's Self-portrait, 1893, oil on cardboard, 34 x 21 cm., The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia)
Armin Hagen Freiherr von Hoyningen-Huene (born in 1942) is a photographer, artist, filmmaker, clothing designer/sewer, model and gay sex symbol best known by his stage name Peter Berlin. In the early to mid-1970s, Berlin created some of the most recognizable gay male erotic imagery of his time. Serving as his own photographer, model, and fashion designer, Berlin redefined self-portraiture and became an international sensation.
Although she treated her own lesbianism as a strictly private matter, Susan Sontag wrote perceptively on gay male figures and issues.
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Abdellah Taïa (Salé, 1973) is a Moroccan writer who writes in French and based in Paris since 1998. His works have been translated into Basque, Dutch, English, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish. (P: Abdellah Taïa reading from one of his own novels at the Internationell Författarscen (International Writers’ Stage) in Kulturhuset in Stockholm. Photographer: Håkan Lindquist)
Salvation Army (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents) by Abdellah Taïa
Friends with benefits is a theme I like a lot, I have always found sexy when two “new” lovers know each other so well they have a mutual understanding that usually couples found in years of relationship. It’s quite common when the friends with benefits theme is paired with a gay for you, but here the author played an originality card: it’s not the gay friend who falls in love with the straight one and manages to conquer his best friends, it’s actually the opposite.
Philomena (2013)