The Further Queer Adventures of Alexander the Great: Boyfriend, Activist and Porn Star
Channel: British Library
Date: 2023-03-23

This event took place on 7 February 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.

This talk by Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Chair of Ancient History at Cardiff University is hosted by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller of the Bad Gays podcast and book.

Ever since the 20th century discovered ‘that horrid thing Freud called sex’ and began to consider sexual preferences as an integral part of sexual identity, Alexander the Great has been scrutinised for what his love life said (or says) about the man himself.

The question of Alexander’s homosexuality, once the preserve of scholars, is now debated in classrooms, on Pride marches, in popular literature, in magazines, in pornography – and the strengthening gay communities of the liberal West has happily embraced the ancient ruler as a gay prototype, and even as a role model for the modern gay man.

The talk explores the modern perception of Alexander’s sexuality in literature, film, and other forms of popular culture from the 1960s to now. What emerges are multifarious gay Alexanders and different personas within the ever-morphing world of queer identity.

Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is hosted by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller of Bad Gays, the hit podcast and book. Bad Gays explores the histories of queer people whose sexualities and/or un-exemplary deeds have been overlooked. From the Emperor Hadrian to anthropologist Margaret Mead, Lawrence of Arabia, J. Edgar Hoover or notorious gangster Ronny Gray. Together, these life stories expand and challenge assumptions about sexual identity: showing that homosexuality itself was an idea, emerging in the 19th century, that was from the beginning marked by exclusion and violence, and that has also been central to major historical events.

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University. He specialises in Achaemenid Persia and in Greek socio-cultural history, and in the reception of antiquity in popular culture. He is the general editor of Edinburgh Studies in Ancient Persia for Edinburgh University Press and co-general editor of Screening Antiquity, also for EUP. Born in South Wales and educated in Hull and Cardiff, Lloyd travels extensively throughout the Middle East, especially Iran, often leading cultural tours, and has acted as historical consultant for major Hollywood movies and for television documentaries. He is the author of several books, most recently Persians. The Age of the Great Kings.

Huw Lemmey is a novelist, artist and critic living in Barcelona. He is the author of four books, including Bad Gays: A Homosexual History with Ben Miller, and Unknown Language. He writes on sex, culture, history and cities for numerous magazines and journals including Frieze and Architectural Review. As an artist and filmmaker, his work has appeared at numerous international institutions.

Ben Miller is a writer and historian living in Berlin, and a Doctoral Fellow in Global Intellectual History at the Freie Universität. Since 2018, he has been a member of the board of the Schwules Museum, the world’s largest independent institution dedicated to archiving and preserving queer histories and visual cultures.

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