The Glamour Boys: Chris Bryant (1939)
Chris Bryant (c) Mr Phil Warren
The run-up to the outbreak of the second world war is a familiar story to many of us – from Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler to Winston Churchill’s powerful opposition to the policy. Less well-known, however, is that Churchill was supported by a group of gay MPs who were themselves among the first to warn Britain of the danger the Nazis posed.
As a member of parliament for the last twenty years, Chris Bryant, our guest on this special episode of Travels Through Time, is intimately acquainted with how important the role of an MP can be at a crucial juncture in history like this one.
They were up against a stubborn government and an often shockingly antisemitic press, so making the case against Nazism was not always as obvious as it is today. But these MPs were used to being outsiders, Chris Bryant explains, because of their sexuality.
Despite the common perception that it was easier to be gay in this period if you were upper class, these men were acutely aware of the danger they faced if their sexuality was exposed. Even elite members of society – aristocrats and high-ranking army officers – could find themselves outcast and prosecuted on evidence as slight as a letter addressed to a man and signed off with the word ‘love’.
As such, many of these MPs had spent time in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, with its liberal attitudes towards homosexuality and a thriving nightlife for gay men and women. This also meant that when the Nazis rose to power, many of these British MPs had personal connections and first-hand accounts of the increasingly violent persecution of Jewish and gay people.
Although their contribution to the struggle against appeasement was hugely important, their lives and achievements have not yet been fully appreciated. Chris Bryant’s new book, The Glamour Boys: The Secret Story of the Rebels who Fought for Britain to Defeat Hitler is an important start in correcting the record.
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Click here to order Chris Bryant’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
Listen to the podcast here
Show notes
Scene One: 19th July 1939, Ronnie Tree’s house in Queen Anne’s Gate, Westminster. The Glamour Boys gather at Ronnie’s house to plot their opposition to Chamberlain.
Scene Two: The evening of 2nd August 1939, Chamber of the House of Commons. A debate about whether parliament should break for summer recess becomes unexpectedly heated.
Scene Three: Any day in October 1939, Victor Cazalet’s Anti-Aircraft Battalion in Sevenoaks, known as ‘the monstrous regiment of gentlemen’ or ‘the buggers’ battalion’.
Memento: The shield commemorating the death of MP Jack Macnamara that currently resides in the House of Commons Chamber.
People/Social
Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Chris Bryant
Producers: Maria Nolan
Titles: Jon O
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Podcast Partner: ColorGraph
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(Some of) The Glamour Boys
Philip Sassoon (1888 - 1939) with King Edward VIII and Winston Churchill (Wiki Commons)
Robert Bernays (1902 - 45)
A Liberal Member of Parliament for Bristol North between 1931 and 1945.
He entered the British Army in 1942 and served in the Royal Engineers. Bernays died just five months before the end of the war in Europe in January 1945, when his plane crashed into the Adriatic Sea.
Image: Wiki Commons
Ronald Tree
(1897 - 1976)
Ronald Tree was a Conservative Party politician who served as the Member of Parliament for Harborough between 1933 and 1945.
Tree was known as a man of exquisite taste and in the 1930s his home at Ditchley in Oxfordshire became a haven for a set of politicians suspicious about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
(Features in Scene One)
Image: Wiki Commons
Ronald Cartland (1907 - 40)
Ronald Cartland was a Conservative Party politicans who served as the Member of Parliament for King’s Norton between 1935 until his death in May 1940.
In the 1930s, Cartland was one of the MPs to warn against Adolf Hitler’s expansionist policies and he foresaw that they would lead to war with Germany.
Cartland was shot and killed during the Battle for Dunkirk in May 1940.
Image: Wiki Commons
Victor Cazalet (1896 - 1943)
A Conservative Party politician, who spent two decades in the Commons as MP for Chippenham before his death in a plane crash in 1943.
Cazalet came from an aristocratic background and was widely regarded as one of the stars of his generation of politicians.
"His knowledge of central Europe was probably unequaled," wrote the New York Times on his death in 1943. A plane in which he was travelling crashed on take off in Gibraltar.
(Features in Scene Three)
Image: Wiki Commons
The Houses of Parliament, viewed from Lambeth Bridge
Credit: The Wellcome Trust
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Click here to order The Glamour Boys by Chris Bryant from our friends at John Sandoe’s Books.
A fascinating account of the group of queer young MPs who visited Berlin in the 1930s and spoke out against Hitler. Dubbed ‘the glamour boys’ by Chamberlain, their warnings were ignored and they were derided and harassed. Their remarkable bravery is given due credit here. (John Sandoe’s)
