World War Two gay love letters could get Hollywood adaptation
The lost love letters between two gay world war two soldiers have sparked possible Hollywood interest.
Gilbert Bradley and Gordon Bowsher’s romantic letters were written during in the war, where they could have been killed for their relationship.
The letters were not discovered until 2008, after Mr Bradley’s death.
Related: Read these love letters from a WW2 soldier to his boyfriend
The letters are displayed at the Oswestry Town Museum in Shropshire, after Mark Hignett, a volunteer at the museum bought them off eBay.
Oswestry is where Mr Bradley was reluctantly stationed to train as an anti-aircraft gunner in 1939.
The couple had been together since 1938, and their exchanges continued until 1945, when the couple went their separate ways.
Hignett said the letters had received a huge amount of interest including from producers, playwrights, and publishers.
The letters have inspired other, more alternative, ideas, including students who want to create a fashion range, and a choir who want to set the letters to music.
People have been particularly touched by a line which reads “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are.”
This line will be memorialised in a heritage project to follow Mr Bowsher plea in the letter to “do one thing for me in deadly seriousness. I want all my letters destroyed.”
The letters will be ceremonially burned, then the ashes turned into a commemorative diamond, which will be engraved with the soldiers’ poignant hope for the future.
Annie Reilly, Director of Heritage Open Days, said the jewel will be “a commemoration of this love which had to really fight against the odds to exist.”
This year marks 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homsexuality in England and Wales, although it wasn’t until 2000 that members of the armed forces could be openly gay.
