Thursday, March 10, 2011

LGBT History Month closes with landmark event in Polish Embassy

Ric Todd, the British Ambassador to Poland, marked the 28th of February by visiting the Polish National Library to see a very special copy of Radclyffe-Hall's Well of Loneliness.

This very early copy of the novel, printed in 1933 in its Polish translation, inspired a young Jewish woman to survive the concentration camp so she could live "to kiss a woman".

During the meeting with Ms. Katarzyna Ĺšlaska (Deputy Director for Development) Ric reminded everyone that the novel was banned in Hall's native Britain at the time.

Pride Solidarity Campaigner Clare Dimyon OBE said: "This is what lesbian history often looks like... tiny fragments that escaped destruction, the most tenuous of connections. Ours is not a history of kings and queens and genetic lineage but something much more subtle".

Read the full story on the Foreign Office's website here.

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