Uncovering the Queer Roots of British Arts and Crafts

Part of the Earthly Paradise programme of talks.

Neal Shasore’s essay Domesticating the Queer: Translation, Transmission and Transgression in the Long Arts and Crafts Movement forms part of the Earthly Paradise Reader, published to accompany Earthly Paradise: Radical Living in the UK. This ‘In Conversation’ explores the importance of queer community within our history and the influence within the legacy of what we deem as our cultural heritage.

Shasore will be joined by Michael Hall, author of A Queer Inheritance: Alternative Histories in the The National Trust. Together they will discuss how homes served as a private haven against public norms for those who defied them, allowing them the freedom to express themselves fully, and how mainstream culture has co-opted these expressions.

Michael Hall has published several books on architecture, country houses and collecting. A former Architectural Editor of Country Life and Editor of Apollo, he was Editor of The Burlington Magazine 2017–24. His book A Queer Inheritance: Alternative Histories in the National Trust was published by Bloomsbury earlier this year.

Neal Shasore is an architectural historian and educator. He is the founder of the School of Building whose vision is for well-crafted places, thoughtfully remade, and carefully sustained. He is a trustee of the Architectural Heritage Fund and the Craft Study Centre.

Image: Photograph of Edward Carpenter and his partner George Merrill, c.1900. Digital image provided by The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, The University of Manchester