Born: March 15, 1900, United Kingdom
Died: February 5, 2004, Belgravia, London, United Kingdom
Education: University of Cambridge
Bedales School
Spouse: Ralph Partridge (m. 1933)
The University of Cambridge (informally Cambridge University or simply Cambridge, 4 Mill Ln, Cambridge CB2 1RZ) is a collegiate public research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and given royal charter status by King Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's fourth-oldest surviving university. The university grew out of an association of scholars who left the University of Oxford after a dispute with the townspeople. The two ancient universities share many common features and are often referred to jointly as "Oxbridge".
Notable queer alumni and faculty at University of Cambridge:
• Anthony Bacon (1558–1601) and Francis Bacon (1561-1626) enrolled in Trinity College in April 1573, where they lived in the household of the Master of Trinity College, John Whitgift.
• Philip Bainbridge (1891-1918), a graduate of Eton and Trinity College, was killed in action at the Battle of Épehy on September 18, 1918, six weeks before his friend Wilfred Owen.
• Thomas Baines (1622–1680) studied at Christ's College, under the tuition of Henry More, and took the degree of B.A. in 1642, and M.A. in 1649. An accident brought him under the notice of John Finch, then at the same college, and from this time they became inseparable friends.
• William John Bankes (1786–1855) was educated at Westminster School and continued his studies at Trinity College, where he received his BA in 1808 and his MA in 1811. Lord Byron, a fellow student at Trinity College, became Bankes' lifelong friend.
• Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) attended Harrow School, and then, despite having little or no interest in academia, moved on to St John's College, and studied history, art and architecture. Beaton continued his photography, and through his university contacts managed to get a portrait depicting the Duchess of Malfi published in Vogue. It was actually George "Dadie" Rylands – "a slightly out-of-focus snapshot of him as Webster's Duchess of Malfi standing in the sub-aqueous light outside the men's lavatory of the ADC Theatre at Cambridge." Beaton left Cambridge without a degree in 1925.
• A.C. Benson (1862-1925) was educated at Temple Grove School, Eton, and King's College. From 1885 to 1903 he taught at Eton, returning to Cambridge to lecture in English literature for Magdalene College. From 1915 to 1925, he was the 28th Master of Magdalene. From 1906, he was a governor of Gresham's School. He is buried at the Ascension Burial Ground (Cambridge CB3 0EA). His cousin James Bethune-Baker is also buried there.
• Anthony Blunt (1907-1983) won a scholarship in mathematics to Trinity College. At that time, scholars in Cambridge University could not earn a degree in less than three years, and hence Blunt spent four years at Trinity and switched to Modern Languages, eventually graduating in 1930 with a first class degree. He taught French at Cambridge and became a Fellow of Trinity College in 1932. Like Guy Burgess, Blunt was known to be homosexual, which was a criminal activity at that time in Britain. Both were members of the Cambridge Apostles (also known as the Conversazione Society), a clandestine Cambridge discussion group of 12 undergraduates, mostly from Trinity and King's Colleges who considered themselves to be the brightest minds in the university. Many were homosexual and Marxist at that time. Amongst other members, also later accused of being part of the Cambridge spy ring, were the American Michael Whitney Straight and Victor Rothschild who later worked for MI5. Rothschild gave Blunt £100 to purchase “Eliezar and Rebecca” by Nicolas Poussin. The painting was sold by Blunt's executors in 1985 for £100,000 and is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum.
• Philip Brett (1937-2002) received his academic degrees from King's College. He was a distinguished professor of musicology, accomplished keyboard player, author and authority on music of the Elizabethan period. He spent his entire teaching career in the University of California system: at Berkeley from 1966 to 1991, at Riverside from 1991 to 2001, and at UCLA for one year. From 1976 onward, Philip produced a steady series of influential articles and books exploring the implications of gay and lesbian sexuality in music. Some of these works included, “Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology” (1994), “Cruising the Performative: Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Sexuality” (1995), and “Decomposition: Post-Disciplinary Performance” (2000). In appreciation of his extraordinary achievement as scholar, teacher and organizer, the Gay and Lesbian Study Group of the American Musicology Society, created the Philip Brett Award in 1996. They give the award each year to honor exceptional musicological work in the field of GLBT studies. For his specialization of early music he received the Noah Greenberg Award in 1980 and a Grammy nomination in 1991. He died of cancer just one day shy of his 65th birthday. He is survived by his registered domestic/life partner of 28 years, Professor George Haggerty, Chair of the Department of English at University of California, Riverside. Professor Brett is buried at St Faith’s Crematorium (75 Manor Rd, Horsham St Faith, Norwich NR10 3LF), Plot: Memorial Garden at Horsham.
• Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), while travelling in Europe, prepared a thesis, entitled "John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama", which won him a scholarship to King's College, where he became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, was elected as President of the Cambridge University Fabian Society, helped found the Marlowe Society drama club and acted in plays including the Cambridge Greek Play. Brooke made friends among the Bloomsbury group of writers, some of whom admired his talent while others were more impressed by his good looks. Virginia Woolf boasted to Vita Sackville-West of once going skinny-dipping with Brooke in a moonlit pool when they were in Cambridge together.
• Oscar Browning (1837-1923) was educated at King's College, where he became fellow and tutor, graduating fourth in the classical tripos of 1860, and where he was inducted into the exclusive Cambridge Apostles, a debating society for the Cambridge elite. After being a master at Eton College for 15 years until he was dismissed in 1857, Browning returned to King's College, where he took up a life fellowship and achieved a reputation as a wit, becoming universally known as "O.B.". He travelled to India at George Curzon's invitation after the latter had become Viceroy. In 1876 he resumed residence at Cambridge, where he became university lecturer in history. He soon became a prominent figure in college and university life, encouraging especially the study of political science and modern political history, the extension of university teaching and the movement for the training of teachers. Browning served as principal of the Cambridge University Day Training College (1891–1909), treasurer of the Cambridge Union Society (1881–1902), founding treasurer of the Cambridge University Liberal Club (1885–1908), and president of the Cambridge Footlights (1890–1895).
• Guy Burgess (1911-1963) attended Trinity College. He joined the conservative Pitt Club but was also recruited into the Cambridge Apostles, a secret, elite debating society at the University, whose members at the time were largely Marxist and included Anthony Blunt. Burgess, together with Blunt, Maclean and Philby, was recruited by the Comintern.
• Samuel Butler (1835-1902) went up to St John's College in 1854, where he obtained a first in Classics in 1858. Tthe graduate society of St John's is named the Samuel Butler Room (SBR) in his honour.
• George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (1788–1824) went up to Trinity College, where he met and formed a close friendship with the younger John Edleston. About his "protégé" he wrote, "He has been my almost constant associate since October, 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His voice first attracted my attention, his countenance fixed it, and his manners attached me to him for ever." In his memory Byron composed “Thyrza,” a series of elegies. Edleston gave Byron a ring which Byron was wearing when he died. In later years he described the affair as "a violent, though pure love and passion". Also while at Cambridge he formed lifelong friendships with men such as John Cam Hobhouse and Francis Hodgson, a Fellow at King's College, with whom he corresponded on literary and other matters until the end of his life.
• Edward Carpenter (1844-1929)’s academic ability appeared relatively late in his youth, but was sufficient enough to earn him a place at Trinity Hall. Whilst there he began to explore his feelings for men. One of the most notable examples of this is his close friendship with Edward Anthony Beck (later Master of Trinity Hall), which, according to Carpenter, had "a touch of romance". Beck eventually ended their friendship, causing Carpenter great emotional heartache. Carpenter graduated as 10th Wrangler in 1868.
• Graham Chapman (1941-1989) began to study medicine at Emmanuel College in 1959. He joined the Cambridge Footlights, where he first began writing with John Cleese. Following graduation, Chapman joined the Footlights show "Cambridge Circus" and toured New Zealand, deferring his medical studies for a year. After the tour, he continued his studies at St Bartholomew's Medical College, but became torn between whether to pursue a career in medicine or acting. His brother John later said, "He wasn't ever driven to go into medicine ... it wasn't his life's ambition."
• Ralph Chubb (1892-1960) was born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire. His family moved to the historic town of St Albans before his first birthday. Chubb attended St Albans School and Selwyn College before becoming an officer in the WWI. He served with distinction but developed neurasthenia, and he was invalided out in 1918.
• William Johnson Cory (1823-1892) studied at King's College, where he gained the chancellor's medal for an English poem on Plato in 1843, and the Craven Scholarship in 1844.
• Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) began a three-year course at Trinity College, in October, 1895 where he was entered for the Moral Science Tripos studying philosophy. With approval from his personal tutor, he changed to English literature, which was not then part of the curriculum offered. Crowley spent much of his time at university engaged in his pastimes, becoming president of the chess club and practising the game for two hours a day; he briefly considered a professional career as a chess player. Crowley also embraced his love of literature and poetry, particularly the works of Richard Francis Burton and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Many of his own poems appeared in student publications such as The Granta, Cambridge Magazine, and Cantab. At Cambridge, Crowley maintained a vigorous sex life, largely with female prostitutes, from one of whom he caught syphilis, but eventually he took part in same-sex activities, despite their illegality. In October, 1897, Crowley met Herbert Charles Pollitt, president of the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, and the two entered into a relationship. They broke apart because Pollitt did not share Crowley's increasing interest in Western esotericism, a breakup that Crowley would regret for many years. In Julym 1898, he left Cambridge, not having taken any degree at all despite a "first class" showing in his 1897 exams and consistent "second class honours" results before that.
• Edward Joseph Dent (1876–1957) was educated at Eton and King's College, where he sat the Classical Tripos in 1898. He was elected a Fellow of the college in March 1902 having distinguished himself in music both as researcher and a composer. Dent was Professor of Music at Cambridge University from 1926 to 1941.
• John Finch (1626–1682) studied with Henry More at Christ's College, and there met his lifelong companion Sir Thomas Baines. Sir John Finch died of pleurisy in Florence, Italy in 1682, is buried in Christ's College and commemorated with Baines, who had died in Constantinople, with an elaborate monument. Their portraits by Florentine artist Carlo Dolci hang in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
• Ronald Firbank (1886-1926) was an innovative British novelist. His eight short novels, partly inspired by the London aesthetes of the 1890s, especially Oscar Wilde, consist largely of dialogue, with references to religion, social-climbing, and sexuality. At the age of ten Firbank went briefly to Uppingham School (September, 1900 to April, 1901) and then on to Trinity Hall. His rooms were the most aesthetic and elegant in the college. In 1909 he left Cambridge without taking a degree.
• John Fletcher (1579–1625) appeared to have entered Corpus Christi College, in 1591, at the age of eleven. It is not certain that he took a degree, but evidence suggests that he was preparing for a career in the church. Little is known about his time at college, but he evidently followed the same path previously trodden by the University wits before him, from Cambridge to the burgeoning commercial theatre of London.
• E.M. Forster (1879–1970)
• Roger Fry (1866-1934) was educated at Clifton College and King's College, where he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles. In 1933, he was appointed the Slade Professor at Cambridge, a position that Fry had much desired. Fry died very unexpectedly after a fall at his home in London. His death caused great sorrow among the members of the Bloomsbury Group, who loved him for his generosity and warmth. Vanessa Bell decorated his casket before his ashes were placed in the vault of Kings College Chapel in Cambridge.
• Stephen Fry (born 1957) secured a place at Queens' College. At Cambridge, Fry joined the Cambridge Footlights, appeared on University Challenge, and read for a degree in English literature, graduating with upper second-class honours. Fry also met his future comedy collaborator Hugh Laurie at Cambridge and starred alongside him in the Footlights Club.
• Geoffrey Gorer (1905–1985) was educated at Charterhouse and at Jesus College.
• John Gostlin (c. 1566–1626)
• Ronald Gower (1845-1916) was educated at Eton and at Trinity College.
• Thomas Gray (1716-1771) went up to Peterhouse in 1734. Gray began seriously writing poems in 1742, mainly after his close friend Richard West died. He moved to Cambridge and began a self-imposed programme of literary study, becoming one of the most learned men of his time, though he claimed to be lazy by inclination. Gray was a brilliant bookworm, a quiet, abstracted, dreaming scholar, often afraid of the shadows of his own fame. He became a Fellow first of Peterhouse, and later of Pembroke College. Gray moved to Pembroke after the students at Peterhouse played a prank on him. Gray spent most of his life as a scholar in Cambridge, and only later in his life did he begin traveling again.
• Fulke Greville (1554-1628) enrolled at Jesus College, in 1568.
• Antony Grey (1927-2010), after attending Norwood College in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, and Millfield School in Somerset, read history at Magdalene College.
• Thom Gunn (1929-2004) attended University College School in Hampstead, London, then spent two years in the British national service and six months in Paris. Later, he studied English literature at Trinity College, graduated in 1953, and published his first collection of verse, “Fighting Terms,” the following year. Among several critics who praised the work, John Press wrote, "This is one of the few volumes of postwar verse that all serious readers of poetry need to possess and to study." He met his future lifelong live-in American lover Mike Kitay in Cambridge in 1952, and followed him to America in 1954 and to San Francisco a few years later. The domestic arrangements were hardly disturbed when Bill Schuessler, a friend of Thom’s, fell in love with Mike, moved in with them, and stayed 35 years. In 2004, he died of acute polysubstance abuse, including methamphetamine, at his home in the Haight Ashbury neighbourhood in San Francisco, where he had lived since 1960.
• G.H. Hardy (1877–1947) was awarded a scholarship to Winchester College for his mathematical work. In 1896 he entered Trinity College. After only two years of preparation under his coach, Robert Alfred Herman, Hardy was fourth in the Mathematics Tripos examination. Years later, he sought to abolish the Tripos system, as he felt that it was becoming more an end in itself than a means to an end. While at university, Hardy joined the Cambridge Apostles, an elite, intellectual secret society. In 1919 he left Cambridge to take the Savilian Chair of Geometry (and thus become a Fellow of New College) at Oxford in the aftermath of the Bertrand Russell affair during WWI. Hardy spent the academic year 1928–1929 at Princeton in an academic exchange with Oswald Veblen, who spent the year at Oxford. Hardy gave the Josiah Willards Gibbs lecture for 1928. Hardy left Oxford and returned to Cambridge in 1931, where he was Sadleirian Professor until 1942. Hardy is a major character in David Leavitt's fictive biography, “The Indian Clerk” (2007), which depicts his Cambridge years and his relationship with John Edensor Littlewood and Ramanujan.
• Walter Burton Harris (1866-1933) was educated at Harrow School and (briefly) at Cambridge University and had already managed to travel around the world by the age of 18.
• Norman Hartnell (1901-1979), educated at Mill Hill School, became an undergraduate of Magdalene College and read Modern Languages.
• Arthur Hobhouse (1886-1965) was educated at Eton College, St Andrews University and Trinity College, where he graduated in Natural Sciences. At Cambridge, he was a Cambridge Apostle and a member of the Cambridge University Liberal Club, becoming Secretary in 1906 and was also the lover of John Maynard Keynes and Duncan Grant.
• A.E. Housman (1859-1936) took the Kennedy Professorship of Latin at Trinity College in 1911, and remained for the rest of his life.
• Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) deliberately failed his tripos and left Corpus Christi College without a degree in 1925.
• George Cecil Ives (1867-1950) was educated at home and at Magdalene College, where he started to amass 45 volumes of scrapbooks (between 1892 and 1949). These scrapbooks consist of clippings on topics such as murders, punishments, freaks, theories of crime and punishment, transvestism, psychology of gender, homosexuality, cricket scores, and letters he wrote to newspapers. His interest in cricket led him to play a single first-class cricket match for the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1902.
• Henry Festing Jones (1851-1928), English lawyer, author and composer. After graduating from Cambridge with a B.A. in 1873, he was articled to a solicitor, and qualified fully in 1876. On January 10, 1876, he made the acquaintance of Samuel Butler through another Cambridge man, and thereafter their friendship became close.
• John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) left Eton for King's College in 1902, after receiving a scholarship to read mathematics. Alfred Marshall begged Keynes to become an economist, although Keynes's own inclinations drew him towards philosophy – especially the ethical system of G. E. Moore. Keynes joined the Pitt Club and was an active member of the semi-secretive Cambridge Apostles society, a debating club largely reserved for the brightest students. Like many members, Keynes retained a bond to the club after graduating and continued to attend occasional meetings throughout his life. Before leaving Cambridge, Keynes became the President of the Cambridge Union Society and Cambridge University Liberal Club.
• Thomas Legge (1535–1607)
• John Lehmann (1907-1987) studied history and modern languages at Trinity College. There his close friendship with Julian Bell, nephew of Virginia Woolf, plunged him into the Bloomsbury circle. By 1931 he was working at the Hogarth Press, owned by Woolf and her husband, Leonard. Hogarth Press published his first volume of poems, “A Garden Revisited” (1931).
• Amy Levy (1861-1889) was sent to Brighton and Hove High School in 1876 and later studied at Newnham College. Levy was the first Jewish student at Newnham when she arrived in 1879 but left before her final year without taking her exams. She was a British essayist, poet, and novelist best remembered for her literary gifts; her experience as the first Jewish woman at Cambridge University and as a pioneering woman student at Newnham College; her feminist positions; her friendships with others living what came later to be called a "new woman" life, some of whom were lesbians; and her relationships with both women and men in literary and politically activist circles in London during the 1880s.
• Christopher Lloyd (1921–2006) attended King's College, where he read modern languages before entering the Army during WWII.
• Donald Maclean (1913-1983) won a place at Trinity Hall, arriving in 1931 to read modern languages. Even before the end of his first year he began to throw off parental restraints and engage openly in communist agitprop. He also played rugby for his college through the winter of 1932-33. Eventually his ambitions would lead to him joining the Communist Party. In his final years Maclean had become a campus figure with most knowing he was a communist. In the winter of 1933-34 he wrote a book review for Cambridge Left, to which other leading communists contributed, such as John Cornford, Charles Madge and the Irish scientist, J.D. Bernal. In 1934 he became the editor of the Silver Crescent, the Trinity Hall students' magazine. In his last year, 1934, he became an agent of the NKVD, being recruited by Theodore "Teddy" Maly. He graduated with a First in Modern Languages and slowly abandoned his earlier ideas of teaching English in the Soviet Union. After spending a year preparing for the Civil Service Examinations, Maclean passed with first class honors.
• George Mallory (1886-1924) entered Magdalene College in October 1905, to study history. There he became good friends with members of the future Bloomsbury Group including James Strachey, Lytton Strachey, Rupert Brooke, John Maynard Keynes, and Duncan Grant, who took several portraits of Mallory. Mallory was a keen oarsman, rowing for his college while at Cambridge. In 1923, he took a job as lecturer with the Cambridge University Extramural Studies Department. He was given temporary leave so that he could join the 1924 Everest attempt.
• Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) attended The King's School in Canterbury and Corpus Christi College, where he studied on a scholarship and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1584. Marlowe is often alleged to have been a government spy (Park Honan's 2005 biography even had "Spy" in its title). The author Charles Nicholl speculates this was the case and suggests that Marlowe's recruitment took place when he was at Cambridge.
• Edward Marsh (1872-1953) was educated at Westminster School, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied classics under Arthur Woollgar Verrall. He was a Cambridge Apostle.
• Ian McKellen (born 1939) won a scholarship to St Catharine's College when he was 18 years old, where he read English literature. While at Cambridge McKellen was a member of the Marlowe Society, appearing in “Henry IV” (as Shallow) alongside Trevor Nunn and Derek Jacobi (March 1959), “Cymbeline” (as Posthumus, opposite Margaret Drabble as Imogen) and “Doctor Faustus.” McKellen was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Cambridge University on 18 June 2014.
• Louis Mountbatten (1900-1979) attended Christ's College for two terms, starting in October 1919, where he studied engineering in a programme that was specially designed for ex-servicemen. He was elected for a term to the Standing Committee of the Cambridge Union Society, and was suspected of sympathy for the Labour Party, then emerging as a potential party of government for the first time.
• Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He was a devout but unorthodox Christian, and, unusually for a member of the Cambridge faculty of the day, he refused to take holy orders in the Church of England, perhaps because he privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.
• Frances Partridge (1900–2004) was educated at Bedales School and Newnham College.
• Kim Philby (1912-1988) won a scholarship to Trinity College, where he read History and Economics. He graduated in 1933 with a 2:1 degree in Economics. Upon Philby's graduation, Maurice Dobb, a fellow of King's College, and tutor in Economics, introduced him to the World Federation for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism in Paris. The organization was one of several fronts operated by German Communist Willi Münzenberg, a member of the Reichstag who had fled to France in 1933.
• Herbert Pollitt (1871-1942) studied at Trinity College, from 1889, graduating with a BA in 1892 and a MA in 1896. He failed to qualify as a doctor.
• Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920) departed from Madras aboard the S.S. Nevasa on 17 March 1914.[82] When he disembarked in London on 14 April, E.H. Neville was waiting for him with a car. Four days later, Neville took him to his house on Chesterton Road in Cambridge. Ramanujan immediately began his work with Littlewood and Hardy. After six weeks, Ramanujan moved out of Neville's house and took up residence on Whewell's Court, a five-minute walk from G.H. Hardy's room.
• Michael Redgrave (1908-1985) studied at Clifton College and Magdalene College.
• Robbie Ross (1869–1918) was accepted at King's College in 1888, where he became a victim of bullying, probably because of his sexuality, which he made no secret of, and perhaps also his outspoken journalism in the university paper. Ross caught pneumonia after a dunking in a fountain by a number of students who had, according to Ross, the full support of a professor, Arthur Augustus Tilley. After recovering, he fought for an apology from his fellow students, which he received, but he also sought the dismissal of Tilley. The college refused to punish Tilley and Ross dropped out. Soon after that, he chose to "come out" to his family. Ross found work as a journalist and critic, but he did not escape scandal. He is believed to have become Oscar Wilde's first male lover in 1886, even before he went to Cambridge.
• Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild (1910-1990) read Physiology, French and English at Trinity College. While at Cambridge Rothschild was said to have a playboy lifestyle, enjoying waterskiing in Monaco, driving fast cars, collecting art and rare books and playing first-class cricket for the University and Northamptonshire. Rothschild joined the Cambridge Apostles, a secret intellectual society at the University. The society was essentially a discussion group. Meetings were held once a week, traditionally on Saturday evenings, during which one member gave a prepared talk on a topic, which was later thrown open for discussion. The society was at that time predominantly Marxist, though Rothschild stated that he "was mildly left-wing but never a Marxist". He became friends with Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and Kim Philby; later exposed as members of the Cambridge Spy Ring.
• George “Dadie” Rylands (1902–1999) was a British literary scholar and theatre director. Educated at Eton College and King's College, he was a Fellow of King's from 1927 until his death. As well as being one of the world's leading Shakespeare scholars, he was actively involved in the theatre. He directed and acted in many productions for the Marlowe Society, and was Chairman of the Cambridge Arts Theatre from 1946 to 1982. Rylands' 1939 Shakespeare anthology “Ages of Man” was the basis of John Gielgud's one-man show of the same title. Though Rylands specialised in directing university productions at Cambridge, he also directed Gielgud in professional productions of “The Duchess of Malfi” and “Hamlet” in London in 1945. Parodying a popular song, Maurice Bowra described the situation of many King’s men as being that of “Yes, sir, that’s my Dadie. I’m your Dadie now.” Rylands became a friend for life. Two years before his death, Bowra received a letter from Rylands “This is really a farewell in case I am stabbed during the Rio carnival, and to say I love you very much, and shall be for ever and ever grateful for all you have done to educate me."
• George Santayana (1863-1952) studied at King's College from 1896 to 1897.
• Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) was educated at the New Beacon School, Sevenoaks, Kent; at Marlborough College, Marlborough, Wiltshire (where he was a member of Cotton House), and at Clare College, where from 1905 to 1907 he read history. He went down from Cambridge without a degree and spent the next few years hunting, playing cricket and writing verse: some he published privately.
• Michael Schofield (1919-2014) obtained a degree in Psychology at Cambridge University, spent the war years as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force, and then studied at Harvard Business School. During this time, he identified as homosexual and decided to make an original study of the social aspects of homosexuality.
• Francis Skinner (1912–1941) was a friend, collaborator, and lover of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. While studying mathematics at Cambridge in 1930, Skinner fell under Wittgenstein's influence and "became utterly, uncritically, and almost obsessively devoted to Wittgenstein.". Their relationship was characterized by Skinner's eagerness to please Wittgenstein and conform to his opinions. In 1934, the two made plans to emigrate to the Soviet Union and become manual labourers, but Wittgenstein visited the country briefly and realised the plan was not feasible - the Soviet Union might have allowed Wittgenstein to immigrate as a teacher, but not as a manual labourer. Skinner graduated with a degree in Mathematics from Cambridge in 1933 and was awarded a postgraduate fellowship. For three years he used his fellowship assisting Wittgenstein in preparing a book on philosophy and mathematics (never published). During the academic year 1934-5 Wittgenstein dictated to Skinner and Alice Ambrose the text of the Brown Book. However, Wittgenstein's hostility towards academia resulted in Skinner's withdrawal from university, first to become a gardener, and later a mechanic (much to the dismay of Skinner's family). In the late 1930s though, Wittgenstein grew increasingly distant, until Skinner's death from polio in 1941.
• Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769-1822) attended St. John's College (1786–87), where he applied himself with greater diligence than expected from an aristocrat and obtained first class in his last examinations. He left Cambridge due to an extended illness, and after returning to Ireland did not pursue further formal education.
• Victor Stiebel (1907-1976) arrived in Britain in 1924 to study architecture at Jesus College.
• Alix Strachey (1892–1973) was educated in England at Bedales School, the Slade School of Fine Art, and Newnham College, where she read modern languages. In 1915 she moved in with her brother in his flat in Bloomsbury and became a member of the Bloomsbury Group, where she met James Strachey, then the assistant editor of The Spectator. They moved in together in 1919 and married in 1920. Soon afterwards they moved to Vienna, where James, an admirer of Freud, began a psychoanalysis with him.
• James Strachey (1887–1967) was educated at Hillbrow preparatory school in Rugby and at Trinity College, where he took over the rooms used by his older brother Lytton Strachey, and was known as "the Little Strachey"; Lytton was now "the Great Strachey". At Cambridge, Strachey fell deeply in love with the poet Rupert Brooke, who did not return his affections. He was himself pursued by mountaineer George Mallory—conceding to his sexual advances—by Harry Norton, and by economist John Maynard Keynes, with whom he also had an affair. His love of Brooke was a constant, however, until the latter's death in 1915, which left Strachey "shattered".
• Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) was admitted as a Pensioner at Trinity College, on 30 September 1899. He became an Exhibitioner in 1900 and a Scholar in 1902. He won the Chancellor's Medal for English Verse in 1902 and was given a B.A. degree after he had won a second class in the History Tripos in June 1903. He did not, however, take leave of Trinity, but remained until October 1905, to work on a thesis that he hoped would gain him a Fellowship. Strachey's years at Cambridge were happy and productive. Among the freshmen at Trinity there were three with whom Strachey soon became closely associated: Clive Bell, Leonard Woolf and Saxon Sydney-Turner. With another undergraduate, A. J. Robertson, these students formed a group called the Midnight Society, which, in the opinion of Clive Bell, was the source of the Bloomsbury Group. Other close friends at Cambridge were Thoby Stephen and his sisters Vanessa and Virginia Stephen. Strachey also belonged to the Conversazione Society, the Cambridge Apostles to which Tennyson, Hallam, Maurice, and Sterling had once belonged. Strachey also became acquainted with other men who greatly influenced him, including G. Lowes Dickinson, John Maynard Keynes, Walter Lamb (brother of the painter Henry Lamb), George Mallory, Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore.
• Michael Whitney Straight (1916–2004) became a Communist Party member while a student at the University of Cambridge in the mid-1930s, and a part of an intellectual secret society known as the Cambridge Apostles. Straight worked for the Soviet Union as part of a spy ring whose members included Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and KGB recruiter Anthony Blunt, who had briefly been Straight's lover. A document from Soviet archives of a report that Blunt made in 1943 to the KGB states, "As you already know the actual recruits whom I took were Michael Straight".
• Howard Sturgis (1855-1920) was born in London to a rich and well-connected New England merchant family. Russell Sturgis, Howard’s father, was a partner at Barings Bank in London, where he and his wife, Julia, were noted figures in society, entertaining such guests as Henry Adams, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Henry James, who became an intimate friend and mentor to Howard. Sturgis was a delicate child, closely attached to his mother, and fond of such girlish hobbies as needlepoint and knitting, which he continued to practice throughout his life. He attended Eton and Cambridge, and, after the death of his parents, purchased a house in the country, Queen’s Acre, called Qu’acre, where Howdie (as Sturgis was known to his intimates) and his presumed lover William Haynes-Smith (called “the Babe”) frequently and happily entertained a wide circle of friends, among them James and Edith Wharton.
• Alan Turing (1912-1954) studied as an undergraduate from 1931 to 1934 at King's College, whence he gained first-class honours in mathematics. In 1935, at the age of 22, he was elected a fellow of King's. The computer room at King's College, Alan Turing's alma mater, is called the Turing Room.
• George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1592–1628). During his short tenure as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, he had initiated the purchase of Thomas van Erpe's collection of oriental books and manuscripts on its behalf, although his widow only transferred it to Cambridge University Library after his death. With it came the first book in Chinese to be added to the Library's collections.
• Horace Walpole (1717-1797) received early education in Bexley. He was also educated at Eton College and King's College. At Cambridge Walpole came under the influence of Conyers Middleton, an unorthodox theologian. Walpole came to accept the sceptical nature of Middleton's attitude to some essential Christian doctrines for the rest of his life, including a hatred of superstition and bigotry. Walpole ceased to reside at Cambridge at the end of 1738 and left without taking a degree.
• Hugh Walpole (1884–1941) studied history at Emmanuel College from 1903 to 1906. While there he had his first work published, the critical essay "Two Meredithian Heroes", which was printed in the college magazine in autumn 1905. As an undergraduate he met and fell under the spell of A.C. Benson, formerly a greatly loved master at Eton, and by this time a don at Magdalene College. On graduation from Cambridge in 1906 he took a post as a lay missioner at the Mersey Mission to Seamen in Liverpool.
• Anthony Watson-Gandy (1919-1952) was the son of Major William Donald Paul Watson-Gandy and Annis Vere Gandy. He died at age 32, unmarried. He was educated at Westminster School, King's College and Sorbonne University. He fought in the WWII and gained the rank of Flying Officer in the service of the Royal Air Force.
• Patrick White (1912-1990) lived in England from 1932 to 1935, studying French and German literature at King's College. His homosexuality took a toll on his first term academic performance, in part because he developed a romantic attraction to a young man who had come to King's College to become an Anglican priest. White dared not speak of his feelings for fear of losing the friendship and, like many other gay men of that period, he feared that his sexuality would doom him to a lonely life. Then, one night, the student priest, after an awkward liaison with two women, admitted to White that women meant nothing to him sexually. That became White's first love affair. During White's time at Cambridge he published a collection of poetry entitled “The Ploughman and Other Poems,” and wrote a play named “Bread and Butter Women,” which was later performed by an amateur group (which included his sister Suzanne) at the tiny Bryant's Playhouse in Sydney.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) moved to Cambridge in 1911, met Bertrand Russell, and became the Master’s most favored student. He was admitted as a member of Trinity College and elected, somewhat reluctantly, an Apostle. It amused Lytton Strachey to call him behind his back “Herr Sinckel-Winckel” and the “Witter-Gitter Man.” He taught at the University of Cambridge from 1929 to 1947. He had romantic relations with both men and women. He is generally believed to have fallen in love with at least three men: David Hume Pinsent in 1912, Francis Skinner in 1930, and Ben Richards in the late 1940s. He later revealed that, as a teenager in Vienna, he had had an affair with a woman. Additionally, in the 1920s Wittgenstein became infatuated with a young Swiss woman, Marguerite Respinger, modelling a sculpture of her and proposing marriage, albeit on condition that they did not have children. Ben Richards was at Wittgenstein’s bedside when he died. He is buried at the Ascension Burial Ground (Cambridge CB3 0EA), formerly the burial ground for the parish of St Giles and St Peter's. It includes the graves and memorials of many University of Cambridge academics and non-conformists of the XIX and early XX century. The cemetery encapsulates a century-and-a-half of the University's modern history, with 83 people with Oxford Dictionary of National Biography biographies.
• Leonard Woolf (1880-1969) won a classical scholarship to Trinity College in 1899, where he was elected to the Cambridge Apostles. Other members included Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, GE Moore and EM Forster. Thoby Stephen, Virginia Stephen's brother, was friendly with the Apostles, though not a member himself. Woolf was awarded his BA in 1902, but stayed for another year to study for the Civil Service examinations.
Queer Places, Vol. 2 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906312
ISBN-10: 1532906315
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228833
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532906315/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
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Love and literary retreat, a Wiltshire farmhouse was a bliss for a Bloomsbury threesome. Ham Spray House was last on the market in 2008 for £2.750.000.
Address: Marlborough, Wiltshire SN8 3QZ, UK (51.3681, -1.50219)
Type: Private Property
Place
In 1924, Lytton Strachey and Ralph Partridge, members of the Bloomsbury group, bought Ham Spray House, and several of that group and other writers and artists spent time there from then until Ralph died in 1960, including Dora Carrington and Frances Partridge. Ham Spray, which cost Partridge and Strachey £2,300, suited their communal living and working arrangements. Surrounded by fields, and with a local shop selling Wellington boots, it was "a perfect English country house.” "We believed there was no view more beautiful, more inexhaustible in England, and no house more lovable than Ham Spray," wrote Frances in her diary. The rooms are of Georgian proportions, with high ceilings and cornices and pretty fireplaces. Carrington’s paintings hung on every wall, alongside works by Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Augustus John. While Lytton Strachey wrote in his upstairs study, looking out across Ham Hill and Inkpen Beacon, Carrington painted in a studio above the former granary. In the evenings, they gathered in the music room, where there was a piano, gramophone and ping-pong table. In Strachey’s former study – now a bedroom - there are surviving works by Carrington, including a mural of an owl and a self-portrait of her riding across the Downs, painted on a tile. On a door in the corner of the room is a trompe d’oeil of a bookshelf, featuring titles such as “Deception” by Jane Austen and “The Empty Room” by Virginia Woolf.
Life
Who: Ralph Partridge (1894 – November 30, 1960)
Dora Carrington was in love with Lytton Strachey, who loved Ralph Partridge, an ex-army officer; Carrington loved Strachey, but married Partridge to stabilise their triangular relationship. In 1924, they set up home together at the XIX-century farmhouse outside the village of Ham, in Wiltshire, along with Ralph’s lover (and later wife) Frances Marshall (1900-2004.) Strachey died of stomach cancer at Ham Spray in January 1932. Carrington, who saw no purpose in a life without Strachey, committed suicide two months after his death by shooting herself with a gun borrowed from her friend, Hon. Bryan Guinness (later 2nd Baron Moyne.) Her body was cremated and the ashes buried under the laurels in the garden of Ham Spray House. Strachey's modest little brass plaque is in the family church at Chew Magna, Somerset. The Partridges had a son, Burgo, and continued to live at the house for almost 30 years, entertaining a roll-call of artists and writers, among them E.M. Forster and Patrick Leigh Fermor. Frances sold the house a year after Ralph’s death in 1961, insisting that it did not become a shrine to the Bloomsbury Group.
Queer Places, Vol. 2 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906312
ISBN-10: 1532906315
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228833
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532906315/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IZ1KZBO/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
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