People march with a large rainbow flag in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Image by Photolibrary / Getty Images Plus)

LGBTQ+ history

Actress Vesta Tilley poses with a bicycle while dressed in male uniform

General History

Drag kings: a brief history of male impersonators

Dancers in a nightclub

Aids: the epidemic that changed Britain

A drag queen applies lipstick in this 1959 photograph

Q&AWho was the first person to call themselves a ‘drag queen’?

What are the challenges of telling LGBTQ history?

Leonardo da Vinci’s private life

Drawing of an old and young man, possibly Salai, by Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci’s private relationships: what's known?

Terracotta plaque which is believed to show the poet Sappho rejecting an amorous advance by her contemporary who is also from the island of Lesbos. (Photo by Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)

From Sappho to It’s a Sin: 9 LGBT+ histories, chosen by experts

The big questions of LGBTQ history

An Athenian red-figure kylix (cup) dating from around 510–500 BC depicts a young pentathlete pulling his older lover towards him for a kiss. In many of the city-states of ancient Greece, sex between a man and a youth was an accepted – even idealised – form of love, its virtues extolled in works by writers including Plato. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Pride and prejudice: same-sex relations through history

View of a gay pride parade in Boston, Massachusetts, c1977. (Photo by Spencer Grant/Getty Images)

From the ancient world to the 1969 Stonewall Riots: a brief guide to LGBT+ history

A women drives oxen pulling a loaded wagon train through the Black Hills (in South Dakota or Wyoming) in 1887

From the real Calamity Jane to 'Madam Moustache': pioneer women of the Wild West

An account of the story of James Allen, whose sex at birth was revealed only by an autopsy conducted after their death

'Female husbands': the secret lives of 18th-century transgender pioneers

RuPaul – who produces and presents the reality TV show bearing his name – performs during a Gay Rights March in Washington, DC, April 1993. Over 500,000 LGBTQ+ activists and allies participated in a gathering organised to end discrimination. (Photo by Porter Gifford/Liaison)

From Fanny and Stella to Ru Paul's Drag Race: a short history of drag

'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' (2020): Viola Davis as Ma Rainey. (Photo by David Lee/Netflix)

Who was Ma Rainey, “mother of the blues”?

The gay MPs who opposed appeasement

The Stonewall Riots: the flashpoint that launched the gay rights movement in the US

During his time in Oxford, Wilde fully embraced ‘aesthetic flair’: growing his hair long; dressing in flamboyant fashions and assuming exaggerated affectations. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

7 facts you (probably) didn’t know about Oscar Wilde

Stonewall and the fight for gay rights

Out of the closets and into the streets: the legacy of the Stonewall Riots

Gentleman Jack, Suranne Jones as Anne Lister (Photo by BBC/Lookout Point/Jay Brooks)

Gentleman Jack

Record producer Joe Meek

Joe Meek: the life and legacy of the British record producer

Sexing up history: how to study and tell the history of sex

Olivia Colman as Queen Anne in 'The Favourite'. (Photo by Twentieth Century Fox/Entertainment Pictures)

The Favourite: the real history behind the new Queen Anne film

A Campaign for Homosexual Equality rally held in London’s Trafalgar Square in 1974. The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 helped pave the way for activism such as this in the 1970s, says Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite. (Corbis via Getty Images)

The 1967 Sexual Offences Act: a landmark moment in the history of British homosexuality

Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde in 'The Happy Prince'. "The image of Wilde in Paris at the end of the 19th century is full of fantasy and sadness, tragedy and humour," says Everett. (Lionsgate)

The Happy Prince: Rupert Everett on Oscar Wilde's life in exile

The secret intimacies of Edward IV: multiple marriages and a same-sex affair?

The Victorians’ surprisingly liberal attitude towards gay men