The UK LGBT History Project records the history and memories of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people living in the UK.
It's a virtual time-capsule, capturing the experiences of our time, and a chronicle of the achievements and challenges of previous centuries – the changing law, the amazing response to health epidemics, the newspapers and magazines that come and go, TV programmes, sports, lesbian, gay, bi and trans businesses, arts, music and theatre, events, pubs and clubs, and of course the amazing diversity of people who have had a part in our history.
The project was launched in June 2011. It was re-launched as The UK LGBT Archive in December 2015, but reverted to it's original name a decade later.[1]
In 2015 this project became a Key Partner of LGBT History Month.[2] and CHE voted to support it.[3] In February 2016 Ross Burgess read a paper about this site at the LGBT History Month academic conference in Manchester.
By early 2021, articles on this Wiki had been viewed twenty million times. They've now exceeded 45 million.
Finding information
There are several ways to find information on this site. Note that anywhere you see a word or phrase in blue, you can click on it and be taken to the item in question. If you see words in red, they are links to an article that hasn't been written yet.
browse by category: to get an overview of the range of material that we cover, go to Category:Main categories.
browse by area of the country: our map on the United Kingdom page gives an overview of our geographical coverage, and our maps of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland give links to places round the country.
take pot luck: use the Random page link at the left.
search for a particular item, using the search box at the top right of the page.
Who is writing it?
You could be – and we'd love you to join us.
The LGBT History Project is written and maintained by volunteers from all walks of life, all ages, and all parts of the UK. You don't need to be an academic, a professional writer, or an expert. You just need to care about LGBT history – and ideally know something about a part of it that isn't well covered yet.
What can you write about?
Almost anything connected to LGBT life in the UK: pubs, clubs, businesses, venues, newspapers, organisations, campaigns, legal battles, sport, art, music, local history. If you ran a gay club, organised an event, worked for an LGBT charity, or simply remember a time and a place that shaped your life – that knowledge belongs here.
We also welcome first-person Vox Pop accounts: your coming-out story, your memory of the first gay bar you visited, what it was like growing up LGBT somewhere that had nothing going on at all. These personal accounts are genuinely valuable – academics call them "qualitative primary sources," but what that really means is: your experience matters, and it should be recorded before it's lost.
Getting started
To contribute, you'll need to request a free account – this takes just a moment to set up, but it may take us a day or two to approve it, as each one is reviewed to make sure we don't let spam advertisers in. We ask for your real name (kept private unless you choose otherwise), and we ask all contributors to follow our Editorial Policy, Style Guide and Image Rights Policy.
If you're new to wiki editing, don't worry – the basics are easy to pick up, and we're here to help. Your first articles may be reviewed by an experienced contributor before they go live, not to put obstacles in your way, but to give you a helping hand and make sure everything looks its best. Once you've found your feet, you'll be able to publish freely.
Wherever possible, please note your sources so that others can follow them up – a link, a book title, a newspaper reference. For personal memories, simply noting "personal recollection" is fine.
Editors Club
We run a monthly Editors Club – an informal one-hour online meeting on the third Wednesday of each month (starting September 2026), 19:00–20:00 (UK time), via Google Meet. It's a friendly space to ask questions, share ideas for new articles, and meet other contributors. Prospective editors are welcome before their account is approved.
Bang Disco (photo courtesy Bob Workman Archive, Bishopsgate Institute) A few of the articles we've added recently:
Madame Jojo's: Madame Jojo's was a cabaret club at 8–10 Brewer Street in Soho, London, which operated from 1986 until 2014 and was for much of that time a fixture of the capital's drag and gay nightlife.
The club took its name from the drag performer Madame Jojo, who compèred it until leaving in 1991; the Soho impresario Paul Raymond, whose organisation owned the premises, subsequently obtained an injunction preventing the use of the stage name, after which she was billed simply as Jojo. The club was home to a troupe of drag cabaret performers known as the Barbettes, named after a character in Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet, who at first appeared six nights a week. It became popular with parts of London's gay and trans communities.[4]
From 1995 the club hosted a drag king night and contest, originally called Club Naive and later Club Geezer. A scene for Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999) was filmed there. From 2005 the indie night White Heat ran on Tuesdays, staging early London appearances by performers including Adele and Lorde, and in the 2000s the club also hosted the club night Kaos.[4]
The venue's logo was designed by Jonathan Harbourne while he was running a gay advertising agency in Covent Garden in the early 1990s.
Madame Jojo's closed in late November 2014 after Westminster City Council revoked its licence, and its loss became a focus of campaigning about the disappearance of Soho's LGBT and cultural venues.
Jill Nalder: Jill Nalder (Jill Rhian Nalder, born 1961) is a Welsh actress and HIV and AIDS fundraiser, whose support for gay friends in London during the 1980s epidemic was the inspiration for the character of Jill Baxter in Russell T Davies's television drama It's a Sin.
Joanie Evans: Joanie Evans is a British footballer, coach and campaigner for LGBT inclusion in sport. A founder member of Hackney Women's Football Club, the first openly lesbian football team in Europe, she has been co-president of the Federation of Gay Games since 2014.
Michael Salter-Church MBE, known as Michael Salter before his marriage, is a British communications executive and campaigner. He was senior broadcast adviser and principal adviser on LGBT issues to the Prime Minister David Cameron, and founded the community interest company that has organised London Pride since 2013.
The Gender Society: The Gender Society is a British online community for transgender, transsexual, crossdressing and transvestite people, and their families and friends. Established in 1999, it is one of the earliest and largest online communities of its kind, with members around the world.[5]
Katie Glover: Katie Glover is a British transgender writer and editor, best known as the long-standing editor of the transgender and drag magazine Frock Magazine.
Glover edited the monthly newsletter of the online transgender community The Gender Society for several years, and from the magazine's launch in 2009 was the editor of Frock, which the Society published until around 2017.[6]
In September 2015 she wrote an article in The Independent, "Why it's time to take the 'T' out of LGBT", arguing that sexual orientation and gender identity are distinct and questioning whether trans and gay campaigns should share a single banner. The piece prompted considerable debate, including criticism from a number of trans and LGBT commentators, and is discussed on this wiki under LGB without T.[7]
Frock Magazine: Frock Magazine (styled Frock) was a British digital magazine aimed at the transgender and drag communities. First published in June 2009 by The Gender Society and edited by Katie Glover, it ran for around eight years, until mid-2017, publishing more than forty issues.[8]
The Communards: The Communards were a British pop duo, active from 1985 to 1988, made up of the singer Jimmy Somerville and the multi-instrumentalist Richard Coles. Both were openly gay, and the group combined chart success – including the biggest-selling UK single of 1986 – with an overtly political, socialist and gay-rights sensibility. They took their name from the Communards, the revolutionaries of the 1871 Paris Commune.[4]
For a full list of recent additions, see New Pages.
Did you know?
Edward White Benson
Edward White Benson (pictured), Archbishop of Canterbury, is thought to have been a repressed homosexual; his wife, his brother-in-law, and five of his children were almost certainly gay or lesbian.
Chelsea Manning, American soldier serving 35 years in gaol for leaking military secrets, went to school in Haverfordwest.
The poet Lord Byron swam from Europe to Asia in 1810, which is said to have started the sport of open water swimming.
The Ladies of Llangollen eloped from their families in 1780 and lived together for the rest of their lives.
Sex between men was illegal in the Isle of Man until 1992.
The sixth-century King Maelgwn of Gwynedd in North Wales was described as "addicted very much to the detestable vice of sodomy".
Princess Seraphina (c. 1700–unknown) was referred to as "her royal highness" by witnesses at the Old Bailey in 1732 – one of the earliest documented accounts of a gender-nonconforming identity in British history.
Roberta Cowell (1918–2011) was a Spitfire pilot and prisoner of war before becoming the first known British person to undergo gender reassignment surgery, in 1951 – two years before the more widely reported case of Christine Jorgensen in Denmark.
Alan Turing, who helped break the German Enigma codes at Bletchley Park, was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 and given a choice between prison and chemical castration. He now appears on the £50 note.
Chris Smith became the first MP to openly come out as gay when he did so in 1984, while serving as Member for Islington South and Finsbury.
Michael Dillon won a rowing blue at Oxford as a woman, then after transitioning won another at Trinity College Dublin on the men's team. When his history became public in 1958 he fled to India and was ordained as a Buddhist monk.
Oscar Wilde was prompted to sue the Marquess of Queensberry for libel after receiving a card at his club reading "posing somdomite" – the Marquess's own misspelling. The case collapsed and led directly to Wilde's arrest and conviction in 1895.
Coming soon…
We are launching our very own mobile app! It’s not a mini wikipedia. It’s a different way for people to engage with LGBT history. It will feature geofenced walking tours. Sites of interest will pop up on your phone (when the app is on) to tell you about your surroundings – or you can take one of the many guided walking tours.
All text in this wiki is freely reusable with certain provisos – see LGBT Archive:Copyrights. Some of the images may be subject to copyright restrictions. See LGBT Archive:Illustrations.
Please email us if you consider we have infringed your copyright.
