Fanny & Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England

Bishopsgate Institute Podcast

A tale of cross-dressing, cross-examinations and a scandal that shocked and titillated Victorian England in equal measure. The alluring Miss Fanny Park and Miss Stella Boulton were no ordinary young women, they were young men who liked to dress as women. As their show trial unfolded, Fanny and Stella’s extraordinary lives as wives and daughters, actresses and whores were revealed to an incredulous public. With a cast of peers, politicians and prostitutes, drag queens, doctors and detectives, Fanny & Stella is a Victorian peepshow, exposing the startling underbelly of 19th century London. Neil McKenna, author of Fanny & Stella, is an award-winning journalist who has written for the Independent, the Observer, the Guardian and the New Statesman. He has also worked extensively in the gay press and is the author of On the Margins, The Silent Epidemic and The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde.