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If ambitious
London has an artistic little sister then she
is Brighton. Flush with retro boutique shops, cool bars, fabulous restaurants,
art galleries and vibrant crowds, this coastal city is one of England's gems and
should be a highlight of any visit to this part of the country. Brighton
on the southern Sussex coast is one of the largest and most famous seaside
resorts in England. Brighton and Hove form a single conurbation. Brighton's
lively atmosphere is a direct contrast to its near neighbour, Hove which has
quieter and more refined character. The two boroughs were joined together to
form the unitary authority of Brighton & Hove in 1997, which in 2000 was granted
city status by the Queen as part of the millennial celebrations, following
competition with other large towns which also coveted city status.
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Brighton
is a popular gay destination
and has long had
a large gay and lesbian community, estimated to include around 35,000
people, or 13% of the total population, slightly above the 10% that is
usually taken as an average lesbian and gay population percentage. An early
recording of gays and lesbians in Brighton was in August 1822, when George
Wilson, a servant from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was accused by a guardsman he
had met in the Duke of Wellington public house in Pool Valley of having
offered him a sovereign and two shillings to go with him onto the beach to
"commit an unnatural crime". Another early story of the LGBT community in
the area is that of philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts (1814-1906), a
friend of both Charles Dickens and the Duke of Wellington, who spent part of
each year at the Royal Albion Hotel with her companion Hannah. The couple
were devoted to each other, socially recognized as a pair, and even sent
joint Christmas cards. When Hannah died in 1878, Miss Burdett-Coutts said
she was utterly crushed by the loss of "my poor darling, the companion and
sunshine of my life for 52 years". Projects such as Brighton Our Story have
been setup to record the history of the lesbian and gay community in the
area.
Today the town
hosts Brighton Pride in the first week of each August, which attracts over
100,000 visitors. The local telephone helpline Brighton Gay and Lesbian
Switchboard is one of the oldest such help lines in the country. The town
also has one of the few gay and lesbian youth projects in the UK in the
Allsorts Youth Project.
Two free lesbian and gay
magazines are distributed in the city: Gscene and 3sixty.
A list of other world round popular gay and
lesbian destinations world round has been included
here
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