English journalist and politician Tom Driberg was BOTD in 1905. Born in Crowborough, East Sussex to a middle-class family, he was educated at Lancing College, where he befriended Evelyn Waugh, and embraced Communism and homosexuality. In his final term, he was segregated from other students after complaints from other students, but passed his exams and won a scholarship to study classics at Oxford University. At Oxford, he socialised with a largely gay friendship circle including Waugh, Harold Acton, Stephen Tennant, Brian Howard and W. H. Auden, but left before graduating. He moved to London, living in poverty while attempting to establish a literary career, befriending poet Edith Sitwell and occultist Aleister Crowley. During the 1925 General Strike, he worked for the Communist Party and began writing for the Sunday Worker. In 1928, he became a gossip columnist for the Daily Express, chronicling the frivolous social lives of Bright Young Things including Acton, Howard, John Betjeman, Tom and Nancy Mitford and Richard, David and Olivia Plunket Greene. He also used his column to defend Radclyffe Hall’s lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness, at the time the subject of an obscenity trial. In the late 1930s, he went to Spain to report on the Spanish Civil War, becoming a prominent critic of General Franco, and joining relief efforts to support the Republican Army. On his return to England, he was recruited as an agent for MI5, until his cover was blown by Anthony Blunt, leading to his expulsion from the Communist Party. In 1942, he was elected to Parliament as an independent member, writing regularly for the Daily Mail and the New Statesman. He eventually switched to the Labour Party, retaining his seat in the 1945 general election, though was censured for taking three months off to report on the Korean War. A lifelong and enthusiastic homosexual, Driberg delighted in casual sex with strangers, regularly visiting public toilets and other cruising grounds and telling his friend Bob Boothby “sex [is] only enjoyable with someone you had never met before, and would never meet again.” After losing his seat in Parliament in 1955, he went to Moscow to interview his old friend Guy Burgess, following Burgess’ exposure as a spy and defection to the Soviet Union. During the visit, Driberg was secretly photographed in bed with another man (possibly Burgess), in an attempt to force him to spy for the KGB, though historians are divided as to whether Driberg ever became a spy. Returning to England, he returned to Parliament in 1959, while attending sex parties with Boothby and gangster Ronnie Kray. When notified of Driberg’s behaviour, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was quoted as saying “Tom Driberg is the sort of person who gives sodomy a bad name.” Driberg is thought to have helped arrange a government cover-up of Boothby’s affair with Kray and procurement of young men for sex. After decades of rampant and indiscreet homosexuality, the 46 year-old Driberg surprised his friends by marrying Labour Party stalwart Ena Binfield in 1951. (When hearing the news, Churchill again offered the aphorism “Buggers can’t be choosers”). Their relationship was a disaster, as Driberg continued his routine of casual sex, demeaning Binfield and treating her as an unpaid servant. They separated after a decade, though never formally divorced. Driberg stood down from Parliament in 1974, and was made a life peer in 1976, becoming Baron Bradwell. He died of a heart attack in 1976, aged 71. His memoir Ruling Passions was published posthumously in 1977, providing vivid and detailed accounts of his sexual escapades.