The Cult of Homosexuality in England 1850-1950

Abstract

Between 1850-1950 homosexuality became a cult in England flourishing in the public schools, the Oxford and Cambridge colleges, the high church movement, the aesthetes of the Nineties and the Bloomsbury group. After the first world war it became a fashionable way of revolting against the ethos that justified the slaughter; after the second the spectacle of so many distinguished writers, actors, and intellectuals being liable to criminal prosecution brought about a change in Britain's archaic laws.