Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell
Bad Gays20 Feb 2024

Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell

Warning: this episode contains discussions of domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.

A rare twofer this week on our show: we discuss the lives and careers of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. Both frustrated writers from the North of England making their way in the repressive, damp climate of the postwar UK, they were sent to prison for defacing library books into brilliant collage art. But when Orton achieved fame and success, the pressure was too much for Halliwell to bear. And their disturbing pattern of traveling to Tunisia to abuse children casts a pall on any simple attempt to recuperate them as heroes.

Click here to subscribe to our monthly podcast "Extra Bad Gays" and support the work we do to make the show.

----more----

SOURCES:

Ilsa Colsell, Philip Hoare, and Leonie Orton Barnett, Malicious Damage: The Defaced Library Books of Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton (Donlon Books, 2013)

Prick Up Your Ears (Curzon Film Distributors, 1987)

James Fox, “The Life and Death of Joe Orton,” The Sunday Times, November 22, 1970

John Lahr, Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton, 1st edition (Berkeley: Univ of California Pr, 2000)

Joe Orton, The Orton Diaries, Reprint edition (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996)

“Joe Orton,” Front Row (BBC Radio 4, August 11, 2017), https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08zzly6

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, our outro music was made for us by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner

Avsnitt(133)

Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great

Season 2! The Greek Vice. Our first evil twink! Plutarch! Prophecies of world domination! Conquests of Persia! Pan-hellenism! Whitney Houston? ----more---- SOURCES: Badian, Ernst. Collected Papers on ...

24 Sep 201942min

Special Episode: Andy Warhol (with Sholem Krishtalka)

Special Episode: Andy Warhol (with Sholem Krishtalka)

For the first of our very special interview episodes, we welcome the artist and writer Sholem Krishtalka to talk about Andy Warhol. How did a shy, fey outsider become the ultimate art world insider? A...

24 Juni 201949min

Teaser: Season 2 and Special Guests

Teaser: Season 2 and Special Guests

Thanks to your support, Season 2 is incoming. And stay tuned for special guests in the weeks to come...

28 Maj 201953s

Episode 10: Roy Cohn

Episode 10: Roy Cohn

The Polestar Of Human Evil.  Stay tuned to this feed for Season 2 coming late summer/early fall; and special episodes featuring interviews and other content all summer. Thank you so much for your over...

21 Maj 201937min

Episode 9: Leopold and Loeb

Episode 9: Leopold and Loeb

They were young, rich, and in love in the Jazz Age – until they killed their neighbor just to prove they could get away with it. Hitchcock's Rope is based on their story; now learn the truth behind th...

14 Maj 201950min

Episode 8: Ronnie Kray

Episode 8: Ronnie Kray

He was a a thug, a bully, and a murderer who made himself a British popular hero. He was a friend of Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra, and he once said, “I’m homosexual but I’m not a poof”. We use the d...

7 Maj 201937min

Episode 7: Friedrich Radszuweit

Episode 7: Friedrich Radszuweit

Born in 1876,Weimar-era gay publisher and activist Friedrich Radszuweit joined public gay life in 1923, when he founded the Bund für Menschenrecht (Federation for Human Rights, or BfM) in Berlin and b...

30 Apr 201942min

Episode 6: Sir Antony Blunt

Episode 6: Sir Antony Blunt

Cambridge-educated art historian, Keeper of the Queen's Pictures, expert in French baroque art – and soviet spy? We profile Sir Antony Blunt, an art historian whose youthful political convictions reve...

23 Apr 201943min

Populärt inom Historia

massmordarpodden
kod-katastrof
p3-historia
historiska-brott
motiv
olosta-mord
historiepodden-se
rss-seriemordarpodden
rss-historiska-brottslingar
rss-historien-om
historianu-med-urban-lindstedt
rss-massmordarpodden
krigshistoriepodden
mannen-utan-spar
bedragare
harrisons-dramatiska-historia
rss-folkets-historia
palmemordet
obskyr-historia
nu-blir-det-historia