‘Oooooooo…get ‘er!’
There’s a long and honourable tradition of claiming that historical figures belong to some fashionable minority. Cleopatra was black, Florence Nightingdale was a tuppence licker, Hitler only had one ball… you know the sort of thing I mean.
Now there’s the case of Admiral Lord Nelson, who was mortally wounded as the Royal Navy blew the arses off the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. As Nelson lay dying aboard HMS Victory, he is reputed to have said to his said to his friend Captain Thomas Hardy ‘kiss me Hardy’.
Based on this, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool has branded our boy Horatio as ‘queer’, and has placed two paintings of his death in an exhibition entitled ‘On the History of LGBTQ and Love’. Apparently the museum’s curators have stated that ‘historians have long speculated about the exact nature of the relationship’ between Nelson and Hardy, and that their friendship and bond could represent ‘the sometimes hidden queer history of life at sea’. Sounds as though life at sea could have had its, shall we say, gay side back in those days; all ‘rum, bum and concertina’, as George Melly put it in his autobiography.
Now as we know, Nelson was married to Frances Nelson, but was also getting plenty on the side from Lady Emma Hamilton, who bore the saucy sailor a child. Nevertheless, those vital three words reputedly spoken by Nelson as his life ebbed away must surely be taken as conclusive evidence that he did, in fact, secretly bat for the other side.
I don’t know about anybody else, but I for one think that we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the Walker Gallery for bringing a new and fascinating insight into the life of one of our greatest national figures.
Who and what next I wonder? ‘Margaret Thatcher was a man!’ claims controversial historian…
Nominated by: Ron Knee




