Joe Orton and Leicester: The Literary City and Heritage Culture

Several cities are associated with a specific author, who figures prominently in their heritage culture: London (Dickens), Bath (Austen), Nottingham (D.H. Lawrence), and Glasgow (Alasdair Gray). Leicester, however, has consistently exhibited ambivalence towards its most renowned writer, Joe Orton (1933–67). This essay seeks to illuminate Leicester’s response to Orton in terms of the literary city and cultural heritage. It proposes that in Leicester, a sexually conservative industrial city, decades of resistance to Orton’s queer life and work reflect the moral panics of the day. At the same time, metropolitan accounts of Orton overlook the significance of his provincial hometown, locating literary culture in London. By reconsidering Leicester’s influence on Orton and Orton’s links to Leicester, the essay offers new insights into both. Most significantly, analysis of Orton’s teenage experience prompts re-interpretation of his later assertions of sexual freedom as signs of sexual trauma, a shift that complicates his reputation both as a homosexual hero and, more recently, as a Bad Gay. In a wider context, this reassessment of Orton’s early years enriches Leicester’s cultural heritage and expands prevailing conceptions of the literary city.