Putney Vale Cemetery: Queer Lives Remembered

One of those buried here is Vesta Tilley (1864–1952), one of the most famous music hall performers of the late Victorian and Edwardian period and a celebrated male impersonator. Her carefully crafted stage persona played with masculinity and gender presentation in ways that were widely popular with audiences. Although not framed as queer in her own time, her performances now sit within longer histories of gender nonconformity and theatrical experimentation, and are explored in more detail in a separate entry.

J. R. Ackerley (1896–1967), writer, editor and critic, is also buried here. Best known for autobiographical books such as My Father and Myself and My Dog Tulip, Ackerley wrote with unusual candour about sexuality, family conflict and emotional intimacy. He was openly gay in private life at a time when this was still criminalised, and his career as literary editor of The Listener helped shape mid-20th-century British cultural writing. Unlike the others listed here, Ackerley did live in the borough, and his connection to Putney extends beyond burial — a link explored elsewhere on this map.

Also buried at Putney Vale is David Stuart Horner (1900–1983), the long-term partner of the writer Osbert Sitwell. Horner himself was not a public figure, but he shared a domestic and social life with Sitwell over many years, forming part of a literary circle in which same-sex relationships were common but rarely named publicly. His burial here represents the often-overlooked histories of same-sex partnerships sustained within artistic and intellectual worlds, without legal recognition or public acknowledgement.

Kenneth Nelson (1930–1993), an American actor, is remembered for his role in The Boys in the Band (1968), a landmark play that brought gay male relationships and social worlds onto the mainstream stage. Both the stage production and later film adaptation were controversial and influential, shaping how gay men were represented — and debated — in late-20th-century popular culture. His burial here links Putney Vale to a later period when queer lives became more visible in theatre, even as stereotypes and conflict remained.
Together, these burials highlight how cemeteries gather queer histories after death, even when lives were lived elsewhere — reminding us that remembrance, as well as residence, shapes the queer geography of the borough.