Pansy

I sometimes think that I became such an outspoken gay man, really because I had such a long experience of the negative aspects of living in the closet. I think I wasted a huge amount of my early life saying ‘no’.

– Peter Wells on his many years of denial that he was gay

It was a huge theatrical pageant .... [as] someone who really thirsted for imagination, and something that wasn’t tin roofs, and wooden houses and mangroves and tarseal, I really loved all the coronation stuff.

– Peter Wells, on the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth

I overheard Dad say 'he's turning into a bloody pansy'. And I remember standing in the front garden, looking down at the pansies, thinking, 'I don't get it. I can't understand it. Why is such an inoffensive flower such an object of scorn?’

– Peter Wells on his father's reaction after finding out he wanted a doll

When I was a kid I used to be constantly dreaming of other places apart from where I lives. And in some ways I treated aesthetics as an anaesthetic, to help me cope with lots of things.

– Peter Wells