“One must be ruthless in the cause of Beauty”: Beverley Nichols's and John Fowler's Queer Domesticity in 1950s England

Abstract

This essay focuses on the interior decoration style now known as “English Country” that is often credited to John Fowler and the “gardening novels” of author Beverley Nichols. I argue that through an appeal to England’s idealized past, particularly the aristocratic tradition and the eighteenth century, Fowler and Nichols queered the visual representation of British national identity in properties owned by the National Trust, in popular magazines, and in novels. I also argue that both Nichols and Fowler, by grounding their efforts at beautification and stylization in a mythical British past, gain a kind of de facto acceptance for queer men and the queering of gender for consumers of their various media, both visual and printed. Finally, analysis of Fowler’s and Nichols’s work identifies a significant precedent for effeminate queers today who refuse the assimilation into mainstream masculinity called for by many homosexuals and heterosexuals alike.