Clare Balding, back on the BBC this week for Celebrity Traitors, uncovered a long-hidden family scandal when she delved into her ancestry for Who Do You Think You Are?
Sports broadcaster Clare Balding has opened up about the shifting attitudes that caused “a huge amount of shame” for her relatives in previous generations.
Whilst Clare’s wife, former Radio 4 presenter Alice Arnold, has been embraced warmly by her relatives, the sexual orientation of her great-grandfather – Merseyside MP Sir Malcolm Bullock – had to remain concealed throughout his life.
Sir Malcolm maintained a close friendship with Sir Philip Sassoon, who was renowned for his exclusive gatherings where homosexual men could be relatively free to be themselves during an era when same-sex relationships remained criminalised in Britain.
Clare – who is presently appearing on the BBC’s Celebrity Traitors – revealed to The Times: “My grandmother wasn’t very happy when I told her about my sexuality, but eight years ago I found out why that might have been.
“Filming an episode of the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? I discovered her father, the MP Sir Malcolm Bullock, was gay. Homosexuality was illegal in his day and it must have caused my grandmother a huge amount of shame.”
During the BBC programme, Clare uncovered that Sir Malcolm, who received the Legion D’Honneur for his exceptional diplomatic service, belonged to an exclusive social set that featured the likes of Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford and John Gielgud.
Evidence of a likely romantic liaison between Sir Malcolm and the painter and theatrical costume designer Rex Whistler, who tragically lost his life during the D-Day offensive in 1944, was unearthed.
The pair were known to dine together frequently and even embarked on a trip to Paris together.
However, no love letters between the two men have survived, as such potentially damning evidence would almost certainly have been destroyed given the societal attitudes of the time.
Sir Malcolm had tied the knot with Lady Victoria Primrose, daughter of Edward Stanley, the 17th Earl of Derby, back in 1919, and they had one child together – Clare’s grandmother.
Clare commented: “The world has changed a lot since my grandmother’s era and I think the success of women’s sport has helped that.”
Clare herself shone in the equestrian world: “I was the Champion Lady Rider in 1990 but it was hard as a jockey because I’m not light. I had to battle to get below 10st, so it was a struggle to totally enjoy my racing.”
Her father, the highly successful racehorse trainer Ian Balding, was tough on Clare during her formative years: “I was a disappointment from the minute I popped out,” she penned, explaining that her father had been hoping for a boy.”
After she began riding competitively, her father kept a close eye on her weight, once telling her: “You’ve got porky. Lose it.”
His reaction to Clare finishing a very close second in her first major flat race was: “You should have bloody won. What the hell were you doing?”.
Clare recalls that her father has softened a bit since those challenging times, particularly during her fight with thyroid cancer: “Mum and Alice became very close when I was ill, and Dad absolutely adores her too.”
Source: Mirror
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