Members' Exclusive Lecture - Anthony Delaney on: Public Virtue, Private Desire: Queer Lives and Church Morality in Georgian Britain

In this members' exclusive lecture, Anthony Delaney explores how love, identity, and self-expression were negotiated in Georgian Britain within a society shaped by church authority, moral regulation, and strict social decorum; drawing on his acclaimed book Queer Georgians. 

This lecture examines the tension between public virtue and private desire in an age when faith and reputation mattered deeply. Churches were not only places of worship, but central stages for respectability, judgement, and belonging, while at the same time existing alongside hidden lives of intimacy, secrecy, and resistance. Through stories of queer Georgians drawn from aristocratic, social, and cultural worlds, Anthony reveals how sexuality, belief, and identity intersected in the very sacred spaces that still structure Britain’s historic landscape today. 

By placing queer history back into churches and ecclesiastical settings, this talk invites us to rethink Georgian religious life as complex, human, and far more emotionally diverse than tradition often allows.