English landowner and diarist Anne Lister was BOTD in 1791. Born into a prosperous landowning family in Yorkshire, she was sent to a girls’ boarding school in York where she had affairs with two day-pupils and was eventually asked to leave. Highly-educated and well-read, she took charge of her aunt’s stately home Shibden Hall in 1826, giving her an independent income and a taste for travel. Nicknamed “Gentleman Jack”, she cultivated a masculine appearance, dressing in black, and taking an interest in sports, travel and business. She had a number of relationships with women, including her longtime companion Ann Walker whom she “married” in an informal church service in 1834. She died aged 49 while travelling in the Caucasus. Anne kept a diary for over 30 years, written in code and running to five million words by her death. First published in 1988, her descriptions of lesbian sex were so graphic that the text was originally assumed to be fake. She has since become a queer superstar (despite being a Tory and a capitalist), played by Maxine Peake in the 2011 TV film The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister and by Suranne Jones in the 2019 BBC series Gentleman Jack.