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In The South

Piers & Queers: Take a tour of England’s ‘Gay Capital’

Gary Hart April 8, 2016

A walking tour around Brighton, the ‘gay capital’ of England, looks at this beautiful and historic city through the eyes its LGBTQ inhabitants over the last 200 years as part of Brighton Fringe festival in May.

WEB.600Piers and Queers is titled after Noel Coward’s quote: “Ah, dear Brighton: piers, queers and racketeers” and takes you on a stroll along the seafront – and through the city’s LGBTQ past.

On the way guide Ric Morris visits locations associated with well-known names such as Oscar Wilde, Dusty Springfield and Lord Byron, each of whom had a special relationship with the city.

The tour also looks at some lesser-known, but equally extraordinary people. One Regency doctor was the first woman to qualify in medicine and performed the first successful Caesarian Section in the English-speaking world. Because women were barred from medicine, she lived her whole adult life as a man.

One Brighton couple, married in 1923, were later found to have been (at least in the eyes of the law) two women. Eighty-two years later, Brighton was the venue for the very first legal same-sex partnerships to take place in an English registry office.

Tours run from April 30 – May 30, 2016 on Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays at 12 noon, £8/7

To book a place on the tour, click here:

For more information, click here:

 

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