The heyday of the gay guardsmen

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Peter Parker has narrated this article for you to listen to.

In 1943 the music critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor placed an advertisement in Exchange & Mart offering a pair of trooper’s breeches for sale. A number of men replied, one asking ‘Have they been worn by a trooper or just yourself?’, while another observed: ‘It is always good to see the boys pulling themselves into tight troopers and then admire the “smashing finish”.’

Members of the Household Division of the British Army, in their figure-hugging breeches and scarlet coats, had always held a particular appeal for homosexual men. It was therefore fortunate that, though the military authorities publicly denied it, there was a long tradition in Guards regiments of combining ceremonial duties with casual prostitution.

It is for this reason that while I was researching Some Men in London, my two-volume anthology of queer life in the capital from 1945 to 1967, guardsmen kept popping up – in relationships with people such as Stephen Spender, John Lehmann and J.R.