Sir Antony Sher & Gregory Doran

Sir Antony Sher, KBE (born 14 June 1949) is a South African-born British actor, writer and theatre director. Sher and his partner – director Gregory Doran, with whom he frequently collaborates professionally – have been together since 1987 and became one of the first gay couples to enter into a civil partnership in the UK in 2005.

"We met when I joined the RSC. He was playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and I was given the role of [the gossip-monger] Solanio, duffing up Shylock; I'd spit at him and hit him. I was very impressed by this famous man who had recently got an Olivier [for his Richard III]. On stage he was volcanic, but off stage he was quiet, thoughtful and not terribly outgoing, and maybe that was attractive to me. We started walking out together in Stratford, and fell in love that summer." --Greg Doran

"We met on an RSC production of The Merchant of Venice, in 1987. I was playing Shylock and I noticed this handsome chap who was playing Solanio, so I asked the director who he was. I was in a long-term relationship at the time but it was an open relationship, and an affair began. It became much more than just physical, though – we fell in love." --Antony Sher

Sher was born into a Lithuanian-Jewish family in Cape Town, South Africa, the son of Emmanuel and Margery Sher, who worked in business. He grew up in the suburb of Sea Point and is a cousin of playwright Ronald Harwood. Sher, however, has worked mainly in the United Kingdom and is now a British citizen.

In 1968, after completing his compulsory military service, he left for London to audition at the Central School of Speech and Drama and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), but was unsuccessful. He instead studied at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art from 1969 to 1971. After training, and some early performances with the theatre group Gay Sweatshop, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982.


Gregory Doran and Sir Antony Sher, by Derry Moore, 12th Earl of Drogheda, bromide fibre print, 2004. 11 in. x 11 in. (279 mm x 279 mm). Given by John Morton Morris, 2005. Photographs Collection, NPG x126962
Sir Antony Sher is a British actor, writer and theatre director. Sher and his partner, director Gregory Doran, have been together since 1987 and became one of the first gay couples to enter into a civil partnership in the UK in 2005. "We met when I joined the RSC. [...] On stage he was volcanic, but off stage he was quiet, thoughtful and not terribly outgoing, and maybe that was attractive to me. We started walking out together in Stratford, and fell in love that summer." --Greg Doran

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Sher

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More Real Life Romances at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance

Paul O'Grady, Brendan Murphy & Andre Portasio

Paul James Michael O'Grady, MBE (born 14 June 1955) is an English comedian, television presenter, actor, writer and radio disc-jockey and BAFTA TV Award winner, best known for his comedic drag queen character, Lily Savage, and later became well known for presenting TV shows as himself, such as The Paul O'Grady Show.

Born to a working-class Irish migrant family in Birkenhead, Cheshire, O'Grady moved to London in the late 1970s, there working as a peripatetic care officer for Camden Council. It was here in 1978 that he developed his drag act, basing the character of Lily Savage upon traits found among female relatives. Touring Northern England as part of drag mime duo, the Playgirls, he eventually went solo as a stand-up comedian. Performing as Savage for eight years at a South London gay pub, the Royal Vauxhall Tavern (RVT), he gained a popular following among the city's gay community and used his character to speak out for LGBT rights. After being nominated for a 1992 Perrier Award, he attracted mainstream attention and made various television, radio, and theatrical appearances. As Savage, he presented morning chat show The Big Breakfast (1995–96), game show Blankety Blank (1997–02) and comedy series Lily Live! (2000–01), earning various awards and becoming a well known public figure.

Seeking to diversify his career away from Savage, O'Grady starred in BBC sitcom Eyes Down (2003–04) and presented two travel documentaries for ITV. In 2004, he began presenting ITV's daytime chat show The Paul O'Grady Show, which proved a hit with audiences. After the network refused to transfer creative control of the series to O'Grady's production company, Olga TV, in 2006 he defected to rival Channel 4, where the show was rebranded as The New Paul O'Grady Show and ran until 2009. O'Grady subsequently presented a late night ITV show, Paul O'Grady Live (2010–11) as well as Paul O'Grady: For the Love of Dogs (2012–) and Paul O'Grady's Animal Orphans (2014–), while presenting BBC Radio 2's Paul O'Grady on the Wireless and publishing a three-volume autobiography.


Paul O'Grady and Brendan Murphy
Paul O'Grady, MBE, is an English comedian, television presenter, actor, writer and radio disc-jockey and BAFTA TV Award winner, best known for his comedic drag queen character, Lily Savage. His long-term lover and business partner was Brendan Murphy, who died 5 days before O'Grady's 50th birthday, after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. Now, Paul shares his life with Andre Portasio, a ballet dancer and teacher. The couple actually met through Brendan in the last years of his life.


Left to right, ANDRE PORTASIO and PAUL O'GRADY at a reception hosted by the Friends of the Castle of Mey held at the Goring Hotel, Beeston Place, London on 22nd May 2012

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_O'Grady

Further Readings:

At My Mother's Knee...: and other low joints by Paul O'Grady
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Transworld Publishers (October 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0553819488
ISBN-13: 978-0553819489
Amazon: At My Mother's Knee...: and other low joints
Amazon Kindle: At My Mother's Knee...: and other low joints

In his own uniquely acid tongue, Paul O'Grady traces the hilarious tales of life in Irish Catholic Birkenhead that took him from a virtuous altar-boy ("my first drag") to Britain's best loved entertainer. It's a life that includes, varyingly, stints in an abbatoir, as a social worker, in a high-class Mayfair brothel, and traipsing down to London to chase his dreams. By 23, Paul O'Grady had been a father, husband, drag queen, gay lover, divorcee, and degenerate. He did it all with a smile on his face, making a mental note to register the whip-smart one-liners that would later inform his star-studded path from the fringes of comedy to the heart of the British establishment, first as his own brilliant comic creation Lily Savage, then, triumphantly, as himself. Paul's remarkable childhood and early life is littered with a dizzying cast-list of rogues, rascals, lovers, fighters, saints, and sinners. Oh, and one iconic bus conductress. Told with pathos, love, empathy, and naturally, biting humor, the story of Paul O'Grady is that of everyman, everywoman, and inevitably, every drag act ever. He has been rich and poor, posh and common, straight and gay. He has mixed with stars and whores and all that's in between, slyly spotting the similarity between them all. His amazing and riveting life story reminds us that there is, when all is said and done, a bit of savage in all of us.

David Kalstone (1933 – June 14, 1986)

David Kalstone (1933 – June 14, 1986), was an American writer and literary critic. (Photo of Edmund White in Venice in 1974, with Alfred Corn (left) and David Kalstone (right))

Kalstone, born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship and studied at the University of Cambridge. He taught at Harvard University starting in 1959 and was a professor of English at Rutgers University from 1967 until his death.

He lectured on and wrote about 20th century poets including Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. His friends included the poet James Merrill and the writer Edmund White, who is said to have portrayed Kalstone as the character Joshua in the novel The Farewell Symphony.

Bibliography
Sidney's Poetry: Contexts and Interpretations (1965)
Five Temperaments: Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, James Merrill, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery (1977)
Becoming a Poet: Elizabeth Bishop with Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell (1989)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kalstone

Just before I left, Richard introduced me to a person in New York who would become my best friend: David Kalstone. He was living not far from Howard Mosse in a sublet. He was a professor (he'd written a book on Sir Philip Sidney) at Rutgers, but I gathered he was in a state of change - wintering in New York City, summering in Venice, being outfitted with contact lenses and more up-to-date clothes, even writing about contemporary poets such as Bishop and James Merrill.

None of that struck me at the time. What impressed me right away was how subtle and gentle and observant he was, though he was almost legally blind. He had a sweet, wise smile, eyes that blinked into the indistinct void around him, hands that made wonderful rounded gestures. Richard Howard treated him a bit as if he were a distinguished but dim cousin, but I felt right away that he could be a... playmate. Although Richard liked all of us to sit up straight and present to the world our best face and to say right off our cleverest remarks and to speak of our serious reading or our life-transforming experiences (the ballet, Angkor Wat, the Sistine Chapel), David would never jump through that hoop. He was completely obliging, but a slightly goofy sense of humor played over everything he touched. He didn't write as much as his friends expected, or so I gathered, but I guessed that was partly because he spent a lot of time at friendship. He was a generous, amused man and he liked me a lot, I could see, maybe because in a sense we were both newcomers. Although he was ten years older than I, he'd devoted less time than I to being a New Yorker, which in those days was something like a religious vocation, full of obvious penances and rarefied rewards --Edmund White in City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s

( David Kalstone looking at Chris, 1985, by Robert Giard  )

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More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices

Euro Pride Con: G.B. Gordon

Starting from June 1, 2015, I will daily feature authors attending the three conventions I will join, Euro Pride in Munich (July), UK Meet in Bristol (September) and GRL in San Diego (October).

For the Euro Pride in Munich, July 11-12, 2015, today author is G.B. Gordon: G.B.Gordon worked as a packer, landscaper, waiter, and coach before going back to school to major in linguistics and, at 35, switch to less backbreaking monetary pursuits like translating, editing, and writing.

Having lived in various parts of the world, Gordon is now happily ensconced in suburban Ontario with the best of all husbands. Santuario is G.B. Gordon’s first published work, but many more stories are just waiting to hit the keyboard.

Further Readings:

The Other Side of Winter (Santuario Book 2) by G.B. Gordon
Paperback: 294 pages
Publisher: Riptide Publishing (December 23, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1626492670
ISBN-13: 978-1626492677
Amazon: The Other Side of Winter (Santuario Book 2)
Amazon Kindle: The Other Side of Winter (Santuario Book 2)

Not all wounds are visible.

Skanian investigator Bengt fell in love with fellow policeman Alex Rukow in a week. But that was a year ago, and they’ve been apart ever since. Then Alex escapes the corrupt and destitute island nation of Santuario and comes to live with Bengt. Happy ever after . . .?

Alex’s lifelong dream of leaving Santuario has come true at last. But he finds himself adrift in a society he doesn’t understand. Worse, past nightmares come back to haunt him, and after so many years of suspicion and self-reliance, it’s harder than he imagined to trust someone else.

Bengt just wants Alex to share his comfortable life. But the more he tries to give, the more Alex pulls away. Their physical connection couldn’t be better, but Bengt can’t seem to get through to his difficult, taciturn lover outside the bedroom. Meanwhile, he has his own demons to confront—not to mention a serial killer on the loose.

Bengt and Alex must dig deep for the courage to face their pasts, but it may be too late to save their relationship or their lives.

UK Meet: Daniel A. Kaine

Starting from June 1, 2015, I will daily feature authors attending the three conventions I will join, Euro Pride in Munich (July), UK Meet in Bristol (September) and GRL in San Diego (October).

For the UK Meet in Bristol, September 11-13, 2015, today author is Daniel A. Kaine (Daniel A. Kaine will attend also GRL in San Diego): Daniel Alexander Kaine, born and raised in England, makes his living working as a customer service advisor.

Daniel started writing in 2009 to alleviate boredom while searching for employment. He started out writing a cheesy fanfic for his favourite anime, Naruto, in which he paired our hero with the gorgeous Sasuke in an Anita Blake-esque world of vampire hunting. To this day he still cringes at the memory of all that cheese... *shudders*

In 2010, Daniel finally worked up the courage to start writing an original story. Thus, the idea of the 'Daeva' series was born, and with the help of the NaNoWriMo boards the story became a reality.

Now Daniel has three novels and two short story out. He has many more stories in the works, and is working hard to avoid the pitchfork-brandishing horde who want the third Daeva book yesterday!

Being an out-and-proud gay man, Daniel's main characters often fall somewhere under the LGBT spectrum, though he does not limit himself solely to stories about gay romances.

When not writing, Daniel enjoys curling up with a good book, and a glass of Jack Daniels and coke. His favourite genres include fantasy of all kinds - particularly paranormal and urban fantasy - crime and M/M romance. He also has a fatal love for video games and can often be seen pretending to be a giant cow with super healing powers on World of Warcraft, saving the world from Russian ultranationalists on Call of Duty, or slaying dragons on Skyrim. He also collects and paints Warhammer 40k models. Outside of the house, he can be found bowling, canoeing and running.

Further Readings:

Familiar Feeling (Coven of Four Book 1) by Daniel A Kaine
Publisher: Wilde City Press (May 12, 2015)
Amazon Kindle: Familiar Feeling (Coven of Four Book 1)

Drew never believed in magic. Then three years after his wife’s unexplained death he unearths a book of spells in his attic. Reading the first ‘stupid poem’ seems harmless, until he acquires his very own familiar, Felix.

Drew and Felix soon realise an attraction that goes beyond their magical bond. However, there’s a coven of demon-worshipping witches out to steal Drew’s newfound power. If they want to survive long enough to see where their mutual desires take them, Felix must teach Drew the art of witchcraft. But will he be ready in time?

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GRL: Lei Carol

Starting from June 1, 2015, I will daily feature authors attending the three conventions I will join, Euro Pride in Munich (July), UK Meet in Bristol (September) and GRL in San Diego (October).

For the GRL in San Diego, October 15-18, 2015, today author is Lei Carol: Lei Carol has always been a country girl at heart, so living happily in the country with her family, three dogs, and her eight-year-old cat, who begs better than all the dogs combined, suits her just fine. The peacefulness of the countryside brings her passion forward and gives her the ultimate place to dream. When she was ten-years-old, her grandmother handed her a romance book and she's been hooked ever since. Her room was like a library through her teen years and she even converted a few others into the world of romance reading. As an avid reader, she enjoyed the way stories flew off the page and left her wanting more. Working previously in customer service jobs, which she found unfulfilling, until the day a friend told her to start writing. Lei put the pen to paper, and as a result, she unlocked a passion deep within. Finding the solace in writing has brought her life full circle. The best part, it is only the beginning.

Further Readings:

Saving Blaine (Cascade Pack Book 2) by Lei Carol
Paperback: 58 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (December 15, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1503258777
ISBN-13: 978-1503258778
Amazon: Saving Blaine (Cascade Pack Book 2)
Amazon Kindle: Saving Blaine (Cascade Pack Book 2)

In book two of the Cascade Pack: Blaine moved to Sleepy Hills, Oregon after months of running, constantly having to look over his shoulder, afraid and jumping at his own shadow. He slowly makes new friends, even letting his guard down enough to try to date. Blaine quickly learns that not everything is what it seems. Elliot Wolfenson has been waiting months for his mate to settle enough to finally meet him in person instead of just emailing. He finds himself trying to control his wolf so he doesn’t send his mate running before he gains his trust. But when his mate witnesses something that shouldn't have happened, Elliot is on the verge of losing the one man meant to be his future. When Blaine's past comes looking for him, will Elliot be able to save Blaine and their relationship in time? Or will he lose everything he has always wanted?