Rainbow Nation: The queer Welsh icons I wish I’d known growing up

Emily Garside

In the 90s, ‘Cool Cymru’ swept through Wales, bringing a new sense of pride in being Welsh and a revival of our language and culture.

But as a queer Welsh kid back then, I didn’t really feel connected to my suddenly ‘cool’ homeland.

Queerness, Welshness, and I seemed like three separate things that would never come together.

Slowly over the intervening decades there have been books that filled the Queer history gap in Wales- Darryl Leeworthy with his A Little Gay History of Wales, or Norena Shopland with Forbidden Lives: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Stories from Wales  also filled the gap that a child of Section 28 like myself had; there was Queer Welsh history, we just hadn’t been told it.

That Section-28 gap is really the key to why this book Rainbow Nation exists. Because so many of the people in it, I didn’t know were Queer.

Either because we glossed over their history- perhaps while learning Ivor Novello’s history, which had a proud aside that he was born in Cardiff, but no reference to his sexuality. Or because they themselves weren’t out- we cheered on fellow Cardiff lad Colin Jackson when I was in school, but he himself wouldn’t come out until much later in life.

Not just in school, later as a musical theatre kid, I’d see Luke Evans on stage, know he was from my country but not know he was part of my community too.

For straight Welsh folks, that distinction might not matter. The country might be the most important- that we share a homeland, a language, a culture.

But for Queer kids of Wales, there’s another layer to that culture, Queer Welsh culture, to a degree, another language too. A shared one.

This book came with a certain trepidation it’s important to be honest about-the idea of who ‘represents’ a community is so loaded. This book could be twice the length, more really if we included all the amazing Queer folks of Wales doing brilliant things that represent country and community.

Then too there are the worries of ‘what makes an icon’…those who are important to me, might not be important to others. My age, unfortunately betrays a bias for 90s pop stars, and an older generation of drag queens. But too in that I learned about people I wouldn’t have- younger drag artistes, newer activists, pop stars and more.

So who is ‘in’? Who do we class as a Queer icon of Wales? Very quickly as someone who avoided rugby all her life (impressive) I learned about Gareth Thomas (still alas mostly none the wiser about the rules of the game). But also learned more of Colin Jackson’s struggles, of what it meant to be a mixed-race gay man in a hypermasculine sport in the 90s, his life parallel to mine, shared in some ways- that working class background, 90s Cardiff life, but also so different. Adding in the ‘obvious’ ones, like Novello, or Russell T Davies, or indeed H from Steps.

Of course, there were the ones we couldn’t include- be they historic people who maybe we don’t quite have enough evidence for (yet) to confidently own their queerness.

Or perhaps a handful who were queer…just not that interesting when it came down to it (mostly 19th-century white male painters) proving that Welsh and Queer does not always an icon make.

‘Don’t get cancelled’

Then there was the ‘please don’t get cancelled’ factor…putting people in and hoping that nobody did anything stupid in the next few months, meaning they had to be taken out (of course, someone did).

That fear of accidentally Queer-Icon-ising someone who later turned out to get cancelled was very real…and proof that also Queerness and Welshness don’t mean infallible either.

Queerness and Welshness then brought me closer to people I didn’t feel I had anything in common with. Jess Fishlock, despite attending my school, was worlds away from me in terms of her athletic prowess. But yet we went through many of the same things in that school. Gareth Thomas, similarly, and I have nothing in common, given I have a limited desire to roll around with fifteen men in the cold, muddy rain on a rugby pitch…we did, however, both find our camp-joy in ice dance later in life, but that could be a very niche overlap of interests.

Joy

But ultimately, this book was about celebrating the joy of Welsh Queerness. Of finding even in those who you on paper share nothing with, maybe there is something after all.

That felt important because, for so much of my life, I was asked to celebrate Welshness, without really feeling that there were ‘famous’ Welsh people who were actually like me.

It never felt quite enough that they were Welsh; there was always a missing puzzle piece. And so by association, I never felt quite Welsh enough. Welsh-adjacent, but if I couldn’t bring my whole self to my Welshness, then I couldn’t really feel Welsh.

Seeing, finally, the array of people who had brought together their Welshness and Queerness made both pieces of the puzzle click.

Rainbow Wales is written by Emily Garside and can be purchased here and at all good bookshops