Hidden gays

To do so, they not only had to get on a plane, but legally “set up residence in Boston, with an address, utilities, phone service, and a bank account,” as then-Governor Mitt Romney had revived a forgotten law from 1913 preventing Massachusetts from becoming, in his words, “the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage”.

At some point between these two weddings, among a pile of vintage pictures at an antique store in Texas, Hugh and Neal found an image that blew their minds: in front of a small 1920s-style house “were two young men, embracing and gazing at one another, clearly in love”.

The same year the French Communist Party called on him to edit its new evening newspaper, Ce soir, which was outlawed in 1939.

As the publisher of Editeurs francais réunis, a combination of two Resistance publishing houses, he brought out in the 1950s social realist novels by French and Russian authors. They sold over 200 million copies.

He was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1860, and traveled abroad for a year.

He was accused of the "abominable & revolting crime of gross familiarity with boys" and allowed to resign providing he never returned.

He went to New York City where he found his calling: a world of impoverished newsboys, bootblacks, and drifters who needed rescuing. Love at first sight in a bathhouse! Two thirteen year old boys told their parents that Alger had molested them.

A whiff of aristocracy hung in the air around the Actons. my pain is crushing me when I suffer."

As a boy he did not play with other boys, but delighted in making clothes for his dolls. "My soul is so full of love ...

For example, they suggest that posing together under an umbrella, between the 1880s and 1920s, probably signified a romantic relationship; that wedding rings, bracelets and other tokens became increasingly common and reached a peak during WWII, when they were donned mainly by sailors and soldiers; and that photo booths (which appeared in the USA from 1924) were significant because, as they didn’t require a photographer or a developer, they allowed a couple to take a portrait without the fear of being “caught”.

So who did shoot the portraits of these lovers?

"You know, he's not nearly as young as he looks," their host confided to his bemused guests.

Francesco Algarotti 1712–1764

Everyone who met Algarotti, whether male or female, fell in love with him. I am a strange being, my feelings run off with me too quickly, and I only make myself unhappy. The room had been rigged by the KGB, photographs were taken, and Alsop was blackmailed.

Harold Acton's father, Arthur, asserted he was born in Naples, that he was also a descendant of the admiral, and that therefore he was a cousin of Lord Acton. The collection Petite sirène presented poems by Neruda and, among others, Jean Ristat, who was at his bedside when he died.

He was one of the original Dadaists (1919–1924); and a founder with André Breton of the Surrealist Movement in 1924, all before he received his Communist Party card in 1927.

He was a novelist and short story writer: Les cloches de Bâle (1934), Les beaux quartiers (1936), and over a dozen other books. I am as fond of you as if you were my brother....

The swiftly gliding gondoliers excited him too, with their powerful naked arms emerging from their wide gauze-like sleeves. It is a tale of social exclusion, undisclosed desire, and wrong feelings below the waist. The wooden assemblage actually displays paintings of Kingwood gardens. Unlikely as this seems, the idea fires my imagination.

She assumed she could cure him, but naturally was unable to do so. The Little Mermaid, for instance, can be read as an expression of his sexual longings, his sexual anguish. As a man he lived a life of secrecy, repression, and half-truths.

His friend Søren Kierkegaard observed early on—when he was twenty-four and Andersen thirty-two—that Andersen's work "should be compared with those flowers which have male and female placed on the same stem." Only in fairy tales could he express himself completely.

He describes how in searching for "The Ideal Friend" he picked up and paid for the services of young guardsmen, sailors, and laborers among hundreds of lovers. Proof of this comes from some of the pictures collected in the book, depicting not just the couple but also – to use a modern term – their allies.

Today, homosexuality is still illegal in 70 countries around the world, and many LGBTQ people are still forced to either be discreet when it comes to expressing love, or to live in complete secrecy.