It’s easy to forget, amid so much ugliness and political unrest, that we live in a relatively tolerant time.
Consider it from the perspective of Gilbert Bradley and Gordon Bowsher, two men who fell in love in 1939 England and traded letters—in secret—throughout WWII. At the time, homosexuality was a crime (still is in some parts of the world), and gay sex while serving in the armed forces punishable by death. This made Mr. Bradley, an infantryman, twice as vulnerable as the average enlisted man—he not only had to risk his life at enemy lines, but also at home.
At first, Hignett pegged “G.” as a young woman—a girlfriend or fiancée—an understandable assumption: “Most homosexual couples would get rid of anything so incriminating,” says gay rights activist Peter Roscoe. It may seem gay relationships weren’t common “back then,” but that’s not true. We just lack the evidence—it had to be destroyed. “Such letters are extremely rare,” he says, “because they were incriminating.”
Luckily, Hignett was curious to see how the affair unfolded. Upon discovering “G.” was a man, his interest deepened. He continued to buy more and more letters—600 in total—ultimately investing thousands of pounds. Now, letters which once invited so much risk into two men’s lives one asked the other to destroy them, are bound for display at the Oswestry Town Museum. They will be published as a book, and potentially see new life in films, plays, music… even a fashion line.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful,” one man wrote to the other, “if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are.”
Not only does the world see it—it celebrates it.