Christmas Special: Colonel Victor Barker

For a special episode, Huw is joined the writer and filmmaker Juliet Jacques to discuss Colonel Victor Barker. 

 

As a military nurse, ambulance driver, kennelman, horse trainer, fascist, car salesman, thief, and actor, Colonel Victor Barker was the embodiment of early 20th century upper-class British masculinity. But he became famous after his trial and imprisonment for committing perjury on his marriage certificate to his wife —because Victor Barker was assigned female at birth. Juliet and Huw explore his life, and the questions it raises around gender identity a century ago.

 

SOURCES:

 

Collis, Rose. Colonel Barker's Monstrous Regiment: A Tale of Female Husbandry, Boston: Little, Brown Book Group, 2001 

 

Zagria. A Gender Variance Who's Who https://zagria.blogspot.com/

 

Oram, Alison: Her Husband was a Woman! Women's Gender-Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture, London: Routledge, 2008

 

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.