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Harold Nicolson's son Nigel Nicolson wrote "Portrait of a Marriage".
This book describes the marriage of Nigel's parents, writer Vita Sackville-West and diplomat-politician Harold Nicolson.
Reportedly, both Nigel and his father Harold had a gay relationship with James Pope- Hennessy. (Tatler)
After Nigel's parents died Nigel found a diary containing an autobiographical account of Vita's affair with Violet Trefusis. Vita also had an affair with Virginia Wolf and others.
Ian Fleming (1908 -1964), grandson of the banker Robert Fleming, wrote the James Bond novels.
In Dr No Bond meets Honeychile Rider whose bottom is "almost as firm and rounded as a boy's".
What do we know about the real Ian Fleming?
The source for most of the following is the excellent Ian Fleming -The Man Behind James Bond by Andrew Lycett.
BEFORE WORLD WAR II
1. William Plomer's Turbott Wolfe was published in 1925.
In this novel, the homosexual Plomer tackled gay relationships.
The teenage Ian Fleming was so impressed by Turbot Wolfe that he wrote a fan letter to the author.
Ian and the gay William Plomer became very close friends. (Lycett)
2. Ian Fleming attended Eton, the all boys private school. Some poems he wrote there are signed with the 'sexually ambiguous name Cary Anan'. (Lycett)
3. After Eton, Ian Fleming studied in Austria.
He decided to translate the text of Anja and Esther, a play by Klaus Mann, the homosexual son of Thomas Mann, the author of Death in Venice .Anja and Esther was Ian's first publication. (Lycett)
Ian's favourite book was The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.
4. In Austria, Ian found that a number of young women threw themselves at him. He wrote in his notebook about how these heterosexual couplings of Austrians with Anglo-Saxons could be 'so distasteful'.
Ian hiked in the Austrian hills with his male friends. Sometimes they spent a couple of nights in Alpine huts. (Lycett)
5. In the summer of 1929 Ian and his mother were on holiday in Corsica. Ian met up with two homosexuals with whom he passed the time playing bridge. (Lycett)
6. Back in London, while strolling down Bond Street, Ian spotted, in the window of a bookshop, a book of poetry entitled Pansies. Ian entered the bookshop to make enquiries about the book. (Lycett)
7. In 1935 Ian went to work as a stockbroker with the firm of Rowe and Pitman in London. Lancy Hugh Smith, the firm's senior partner was a bachelor. Lancy got on well with Ian who was good at charming older men. One former colleague of Ian's described Ian as being 'a hell of a tart'. (Lycett)
8. In his late twenties, Ian was still living at home with his 'overbearing' mother. Eventually he bought a central London flat. (Lycett)
9. One of Ian's female friends was Lady Mary Pakenham. According to Lady Mary, Ian was feminine and nervous and he often had a look of melancholy and loss.
According to Lady Mary, "the average girl simply did not like him." At parties, Ian would initiate a conversation with a put-down. (Lycett)
10. In some of Ian's erotic fantasies, there were schoolmistresses who whipped people. According to Lycett, Ian had a large collection of books about flagellation. (Lycett)
THE WAR YEARS
11. During World War II, Ian worked for Naval Intelligence.
12. At this time, two of Ian's friends were Ann O'Neill, who strongly fancied Ian, and Sefton Delmer, an expert on black propaganda.
According to Ann, Delmer "rouses all Ian's brain mania, plus his sublimated homosexualism." (Lycett)
On the subject of marriage, Ian told a friend Peter Smithers: "I can't see anything in it for me." (Lycett)
Ian was eventually persuaded or manipulated into marrying Ann when he was aged 43. It was not a happy marriage.
13. One evening in London, in 1943, Ian stepped into a pub off Piccadilly and got talking to a stranger, who turned out to be the homosexual poet James Kirkup. Ian asked for Kirkup's address. (Lycett)
14. At a Christmas day party, in 1943, Ian gave each of the female guests a book of Verlaine's poems, with suitable passages marked by Ian. Ann O'Neill found that her passage referred to lesbian love. Paul Verlaine's poetry celebrates homosexuality. (Lycett)
15. One of Ian's American contacts was Lieutenant AlanSchneider of the US navy. Ian told Schneider that "men were the only real human beings, the only ones he could be friends with." (Lycett)
16. Ian attended an Anglo-American naval conference in Jamaica. He told his friend Ivar Bryce: "When we have won this blasted war, I am going to live in Jamaica ... and write books." (Lycett)
Jamaica was to become, for a time, a place that attracted many famous gay men, such as Ian's friend Noel Coward.
According to Ian, Kingston, the capital, "would provide you with every known amorous constellation and permutation." (Lycett)
1945-1952 16. Ian went to work for The Sunday Times as foreign manager. Many of the journalists he worked with, such as Antony Terry and Henry Brandon, had links to the intelligence services. According to Anthony Cavendish, a former British agent, the newspaper group for which Ian worked was happy to take on MI6 people as foreign correspondents. (Lycett).
17. In 1946, aged 38, Ian was smoking 70 cigarettes and drinking a bottle of gin each day. (Lycett)
18. On Jamaica, Ian built a house called Goldeneye. Ian employed a houseboy and other staff for this bachelors' paradise. When Ivar Bryce and John Fox-Strangeways came to stay with Ian, the three of them would swim naked before breakfast. (Lycett)
Ian's first tenant at Goldeneye was his gay friend Noel Coward.
19. Around 1948, Ann O'Neill wrote a fictionalised account of her relationship with Ian. In this story, Ian is called Gervase. Ann explained that Gervase (Ian) was attractive to both men and women and his services were solicited by "middle-aged men of medium eminence."
Ann once told Evelyn Waugh that Ian's "only happiness is pink gin, golf clubs and men." (Lycett)
20. Ann divorced her husband Viscount Rothermere. In 1952, she became pregnant. Ian, aged 43, decided to marry her.
1952 - 1964 21. Marriage led Ian to start writing his Bond books. It was a form of escape.
22. Ian and Ann often took separate holidays. 23.Ian traveled to Jamaica as often as possible. Among the guests at Goldeneye at this time was Angus Wilson who lived in Jamaica with his companion Odo Cross, a former Guards officer who liked to wear his mother's pearls. (Lycett) 24. Ann and Ian were friends of the reportedly gay writer Somerset Maugham and they visited him at his villa in the South of France. Ian adopted a 'fawning role' with Maugham and Ann was struck by the similarities between the two writers. Both liked exotic-smelling soaps in their bathrooms. Ann had "a curious feeling that they both regarded 'women' with mistrust". (Lycett)
25. Truman Capote stayed at Goldeneye and Ian described him as being a 'fascinating companion'.
Errol Flynn was another visitor to Goldeneye.
The north coast of Jamaica was seen as having a growing gay enclave. (Lycett)
26. Ann began a long relationship with Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the United Kingdom's Labour Party, and seen as being a possible future Prime Minister. Ann reported to her friend Beaverbrook that Gaitskell was a "changed man - all he wants is wine, women and song". (Lycett)
Meanwhile, Ian was having a relationship with a wealthy Jewish woman in Jamaica, called Blanche Blackwell.
27. When Ian's four-year-old son Caspar came out to Jamaica, Ian noted that Caspar wore a hibiscus flower in his ear and called himself Mary.
When the family went to Austria, Caspar was dressed in lederhosen. (Lycett)
28. In 1957, Ian found himself in a Dean's Bar.
This was a gay bar, in Tangier in Morocco.
Ian had chosen Tangier as a place to meet retired MI5 agent John Collard who was based in South Africa.
Ian wanted to talk to Collard in connection with research for a book. (Lycett) 29. Ian liked Venice and when he traveled there with Ann he gave her a copy of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, the story of a man's love for a boy. (Lycett) 30. InDr No, we read of Honeychile: "It was a beautiful back. The skin was a very light uniform café au lait with the sheen of dull satin. The gentle curve of the backbone was deeply indented, suggesting more powerful muscles than is usual in a woman, and the behind was almost as firm and rounded as a boy's."
In 1963, Cyril Connolly wrote a parody of Bond for the London Magazine. This was called Bond Strikes Camp and it seemed to suggest that most British spies were secretly gay. 31. In the early 1960s, Ian would spend evenings with John blackwell.
Blackwell was a bachelor school teacher who had a house in the grounds of Wellesley House school at Broadstairs in Kent. The school takes boys up to the age of thirteen.
On Sunday afternoons Ian and Blackwell would take some pupils from the school on a car outing to a local golf course. Ian would give the boys Bond memorabilia. (Lycett)
32. Hugh Gaitskell died rather mysteriously in 1963.
Dr Ian Stevenson is the former head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and now is Director of the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia.
For 40 years he has been studying the past life memories of children from all over the world.
Dirk Bogarde never married and was reported to be homosexual.[2]
He shared his homes, first in Amersham, England, then in France with Anthony Forwood.
Dirk Bogarde's brother Gareth Van den Bogaerde 'confirmed in a 2004 interview that Bogarde was engaging in homosexual sex at a time when such acts were illegal, and also that his long-term relationship with Tony Forwood was more than simply that of a manager and friend.' [3]
In 1961, Dirk Bogarde played the part of a homosexual barrister in the film Victim.
The barrister has had a relationship with a young man. The barrister takes on a group of blackmailers and thus puts at risk his career and his marriage.
Victim helped lead to the decriminalization of male homosexuality in 1967.
Victim was not shown in many of the larger cinemas and it did put off some of Bogarde's fans. (Dirk Bogarde)
In 1963, Bogarde played the part of the rather gay valet in Joseph Losey's The Servant.
In the mid-1960s, Bogarde moved to Provence in the South of France, where he lived with Tony Forwood.
In 1971, Bogarde played the part of Aschenbach in Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice , based on Thomas Mann's novella. Aschenbach becomes obsessed with a beautiful boy.
Other films include Visconti's The Damned (1969), Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter (1974), and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Despair (1978).
In the 1980's Bogarde began writing books, both autobiography and novels, the first being A Postillion Struck by Lightning. Bogarde was knighted in 1992.
He was the first actor to act the part of a sympathetic gay character in British film.
Young boys were an interest for novelist Graham Greene, Emperor Tiberius, German industrialist Friedrich Alfred Krupp and many others who made their homes on Capri.
This island of satyrs has a licentious reputation.
'For occasional homosexual adventures', novelist Graham Greene used to take young Italian boys to Villa Rossaio, his home on the island (Source: Graham Greene, The Man Within, by Michael Shelden, publ.Heinemann.)
Greene's friend Doctor Elizabeth Moor confided in her friend Gitta Bittorf that the boys used to stay with Greene on Capri for one or two days; and postman Attilo Scoppa found that Greene often had boys, aged 14-16, staying at Villa Rossaio.
People in the town of Anacapri told Scoppa "the boys came for sex."
Greene was sufficiently well liked by his fellow citizens to be given the title of Honorary Citizen of Anacapri.
Emperor Tiberius, who retired to Capri around 30 AD, is reported to have indulged in endless orgies with boy concubines.
It is said that the walls of his villa were covered with huge pornographic paintings.
According to some sources he enjoyed having mullet nibble his crumb-coated genitals as he relaxed in rock pools; and he used to have his organ covered in milk and honey so that babies would suckle his glans.
There were stories, put about by his enemies, that Tiberius had boys flung into the sea from the high cliffs beneath his villa.
One of the hundreds of boys who lived with Tiberius was Vitellius, who after working as catamite for Caligula, Claudius and Nero, became Emperor in 69 AD. So they can't all have been flung from the cliffs.
Multimillionaire German industrialist Friedrich Alfred Krupp (1854-1902) set up a comfortable 'palace' in a grotto on Capri, where he entertained underage Italian boys, mostly the sons of local fishermen. Sex was performed to the accompaniment of a string quartet, and orgasms were celebrated with bursts of fireworks.
When Krupp's wife heard rumours of what was going on, she went to the Kaiser, who had her put into an insane asylum. The Krupp military-industrial empire was too vital to Germany. However, the German press eventually found out about Krupp's activities, and printed the whole story, complete with photographs taken by Krupp himself inside the grotto.
Capri was where Oscar Wilde was reunited with Lord Alfred Douglas after being released from jail.
Noel Coward took the title of his song 'A Bar on the Piccola Marina' from the island's favourite meeting place for 'free spirits'.
Capri was home to paedophile Norman Douglas, who was Greene's best friend on the island in the late 1940's and early 1950's. Norman Douglas was the author of 'South Wind' which captured the air of sensuality associated with Capri and Southern Italy.
Famous Scot, Campton Mackenzie, was apparently another boylover who fell for Capri. He moved there with his wife in 1913 and remained about ten years. Two of his books were set on Capri: 'Vestal Fire' and 'Extraordinary Women.' According to biographers, he bought a small villa in the plain of Cetrella, 'where he used to hold his amorous encounters with young boys.' In 1918, the arrival in Capri of a group of lesbians, gave Mackenzie the inspiration to write 'Extraordinary Women.'
"I sprang from the Sorrento sailing-boat onto the little beach. Swarms of BOYS were playing about among the upturned boats or bathing their shining bronze bodies in the surf....." So wrote the famous Swede, Axel Munthe.
Munthe's autobiographical "The History of S. Michele" was published for the first time in English in 1929. Since then this book about Capri has been translated into many languages and is now among the most read books after the Bible. It was in 1887 that Munthe decided to settle on Capri and work as the municipal doctor.
Munthe's first visit to Capri had been in 1884 at the time of a cholera outbreak in Naples. As soon as he had landed on the island, he had fallen in love with the ruins of a little medieval chapel dedicated to S. Michele, surrounded by a large vineyard hiding the ruins of a Roman villa.
He decided to create his dream villa called San Michele and bought a whole mountain to make this possible. "My house must be open to the sun, to the wind, to the sea, like a Greek temple, and light, light everywhere".
Munthe was a lover of the arts, a philanthropist, and a great lover of animals.
Baron Fersen of Adeswarde, born in Paris in 1880 of a family of steel industrialists, was another lover of Capri. On 10 June 1903, the day of Fersen's engagement to the Viscount of Moupeou's daughter, he was arrested under charges of gross indecency and corruption of young boys. After that disaster he decided to take up permanent residence on his favourite island of Capri. Here he rented Villa Certosella.
Just what are the attractions of Capri to the rich, the famous and the cognoscenti?
It could be the Alma-Tadema seas, the erect cliffs and stacks, the little white Mediterranean villas, the narrow Venetian-style lanes, and all the perfume and colour of lemon trees, nasturtiums, lavender, rosemary, and honeysuckle.
It could be the grilled buffalo-milk mozzarella, the dark red wine, the chic shopping or the little beaches reached by steep paths.
It is no longer the sons of local fishermen.
HOW TO GET TO CAPRI. A ferry or a hydrofoil takes you from NAPLES or SORRENTO. In Naples the best point of departure is MOLO BEVERELLO. From Naples the ferry takes 80 minutes and costs about £3. The hydrofoil takes 40 minutes and costs about £6. From Sorrento the ferry takes about 40 minutes and costs just under £3, while the hydrofoil takes 20 minutes and costs about £4.
SOME FACTS ABOUT CAPRI
Capri is 6,7 Km in length and its width varies between 2,7 Km and 1,2 Km. The islands highest point is Mount Solaro - 589 metres. There are two towns: Capri and Anacapri. About 8000 people live in Capri and 7000 in Anacapri. The town of Capri is located on the eastern side of the island, Marina Grande (the port) to the North and Marina Piccola to the South. Anacapri is on the western side of the island and is separated from Capri town by the imposing slopes of Mount Solaro. The climate is Mediterranean. The temperature varies from 10ºC in February - the coldest month - to 28ºC in August. Spring and Autumn are the milder seasons during which it is certainly more pleasant to visit the island.
A TOUR OF CAPRI Your boat arrives in Marina Grande (in the north). This is a pleasant little port, with a small rocky beach. To get to Capri town, you set off uphill by funicular, or on foot, or by taxi.
Capri is the name of the main village/town and it has most of the shops and restaurants. You can drink or dine in the famous Piazzetta the small square in the centre of town. Prices tend to be high.
Higher up in the hills is another village/town called Anacapri (it can be reached by bus or cab).
Anacapri has the stunning Villa San Michele which houses the art collection of Swedish doctor Axel Munthe, author of the autobiography 'The Story of San Michele.' Imagine a light and airy villa, full of ancient statues, and pe rched high above the sea. You will be overwhelmed by the magic of this place.
From Anacapri you can take a chairlift to the summit of one of the highest peaks on the island, Mount Solaro, to enjoy the wonderful view over the sea and the Bay of Naples.
You can visit the famous Blue Grotto (a big blue cave reached by boat; the sunlight passing through an underwater cavity, creates the blueness) and the Natural Arch (caused by a cave collapsing) and the Faraglioni (the world famous stacks/rock formations off the eastern tip of the island. )
It is also possible to tour the lesser-known grottoes of Capri by hiring a boat from Marina Piccola.
There are no sandy beaches on Capri, but there are flat rocks at Marina Piccola and at the Faraglioni where one can sunbathe and swim safely; and there is a small stone beach called Bagni di Tiberio within walking distance from Marina Grande.
Via Krupp is a favourite of mine. It is a walk that takes you along a narrow routeway past villas, orange trees and bougainvillea. The views are sheer Alma Tadema and the road has been called 'the world's most beautiful.'
The Gardens of Augustus, built on top of Roman ruins, were built by Krupp. Take your camera!
The best example of typical Capri architecture (little domes and flat roofs) is found at the Charterhouse of San Giacomo, built in 1371-74, by the secretary to the Queen of Naples. Another place for photos.
Villa Jovis is a favourite place. This is the island's largest Roman villa and was built for Tiberius. The ruins were only discovered in the 1700's. What is so sublime about it is the feeling of being up in the sky, looking down at faraway mountains, cliffs and rocks; and thinking: Tiberius held orgies here!
Ah, and there's also a scrumptious little open-air restaurant nearbye.
Churches: There are many beautiful little churche s to visit when you feel like getting some shade and thinking about the impossibility of all this beauty coming about by accident.
Walks in general. There are many little tracks and paths to follow that will take you to places of enchantment. You may encounter fuschias and poppies and a lighthouse and......
The people (Capresi) are pleasant and helpful.
If you don't like people, then the best months to visit Capri are May, June and September. In July and August parts of the island, such as Capri town, tend to be crowded with huge tour groups on short day trips.
And finally, RESTAURANTS. Capri - Faraglioni, Via Camerelle 75, does tasty filetto con patate e peperoni (meat and potatoes). This restaurant is very central. Anacapri - Il Solitario Via Timpone 1 (closed Mondays) has fantastic pasta which can be eaten in the garden. Anacapri - Lido del Faro on the seaside promenade has excellent risotto and beautiful views.
Will you like Capri? It's a place for artists, romantics and dreamers......
Sir Harold Nicolson "was variously an acquaintance, associate, friend, or intimate to such figures as Ramsay MacDonald, David Lloyd George, Duff Cooper, Charles de Gaulle, Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill, along with a host of literary and artistic figures." (Harold Nicolson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) 
