Is It Still so Hard to Be Gay After All This Time?

Evening Standard - London › May 05, 2007

Linked as:

Summary

LASTJuly I well remember hearing Lord Browne's Desert Island Discs on the radio. The guest's choice of their eight favourite records, their adored luxuries, and the chitchat about their life, has always struck me as one of the most accurate litmus tests of a person's psyche far better than putting them more obviously in the psychiatrist's chair.

The Lord Browne that emerged from this was a cramped, difficult and unresolved personality. No matter that he'd had an enormously successful business career; nor that he'd garnered huge wealth and powerful political contacts; nor, even, that he led an exotic lifestyle. As I listened to his tight-lipped discussion of favourite arias and his late, beloved mother, I said to my companion: "Poor man, he's obviously a terribly unhappy and repressed gay man." I now know that this very interview, for Desert Island Discs, was meant to be the one when Lord Browne came out to the world. It was already an open secret in the circles he moved in that he was gay; and hispartner of four years, Jeff Chevalier, had often accompanied him to receptions and other quasi-official events.