Tom Daley will carry flag for Team GB at Olympics

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Gold-medal diver Tom Daley will join Helen Glover in carrying the Union Flag for Team GB at the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony.

Tom Daley says being given the role of flagbearer for the British team at the Olympics opening ceremony is “one of the greatest honours” of his career. The 30-year-old diving gold-medal winner from Tokyo has been selected on the eve of his fifth Games, alongside rower Helen Glover.

The announcement was made by Team GB’s Chef de Mission Mark England at the team reception at the British Embassy in Paris on Wednesday evening. Daley and Glover will hold the Union Flag aloft aboard one of the spectacular flotilla of boats that will proceed down the River Seine on Friday.

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For an episode of the BBC’s “All About… Olympics” series for Paris 2024, Daley sat down with his former diving idol and mentor Leon Taylor, who he watched on TV winning silver in 10m synchro at Athens 2004.

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LGBTQ Life in Weimar Germany

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In this episode of the You’re Dead to Me podcast, Greg Jenner is joined in twentieth-century Germany by Dr Bodie Ashton and comedian Jordan Gray to learn all about LGBTQ life and culture during the Weimar Republic.

After the failure of the First World War and the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, German politics underwent something of a revolution. With the end of the old imperial order came the questioning of its conservative social values, and feminist and socialist campaigners sought to rethink old assumptions about gender roles, family life and sexuality.

Part of this included a flourishing of LGBTQ life and culture in the 1920s and early 1930s. In this episode, Greg and his guests explore the political and economic circumstances of Weimar Germany, queer club culture, magazines and filmmaking; alongside research into sexuality and campaigns for transgender and gay liberation, to discover why Weimar Germany was such a focal point for LGBTQ life in this period.

Lord Byron: A Queer Rock Star

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Few lives from history can have contained as many strange and exciting strands as that of Lord Byron’s, whose story reflects the great dramas of the Napoleonic era. A vampiric hero of devilish charisma; a martyr for liberty, a licentious lothario; Byron’s cultural and literary impact cannot be underestimated.

The remarkable course of his life, and his mercurial nature can in part be explained by the dark events of his childhood, and the outlandish history of his own family. Born with a club foot – his “satanic mark” – to “Mad Jack” Byron, a former gigolo dogged by incest and financial ruin, and an unpredictable mother, a strange curse seemed to lie over the family. Impoverished before the inheritance of his title and a romantic ruin in Nottinghamshire, the plump and provincial boy would finally find solace at school and university, where he transformed into the glamorous rake he would become. There too would he discover the dubious sexual passions that would haunt his life…

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Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás

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In his 55 years of life, Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás was an adventurer, a geologist, a spy, a dinosaur scientist, one of the founders of paleobiology, the world’s first airplane hijacker, a founder of the field of Albanian studies, a cosplay artist, and a murderer.

Born in 1877 in Transylvania, the Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felsö-Szilvás may have been, except perhaps as a pub quiz answer, lost to history since his death, but in his lifetime he had an outsized impact on several scientific disciplines, central European politics and nationalisms, and, unfortunately, the man who he lived with until a murder-suicide ended both of their lives.

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Elagabalus

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This episode of Bad Gays has everything: a tyrannical little boy king, a dictator who wanted to overthrow the Roman pantheon and install a meteorite as the object of a new monotheism, prostitution and vestal virgins, and drowning your party guests in rose petals.

We break down Elagabalus: the myth, the legend, the gender-bending icon and the searcher for the biggest dicks in the Roman Empire.

You can also listen to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

Drag: A British history

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Drag is an art form that’s seen a great deal of success – and a little controversy – in recent years. Yet, as Jacob Bloomfield argues in his book, Drag: A British History, it’s also entertained British audiences for decades, stretching back to the music halls of the Victorian era and revue shows of the Second World War.