Background
Pitt-Rivers was the son of Captain George Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers and the Honorary
Pitt-Rivers was the son of Captain George Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers and the Honorary
This trial was instrumental in bringing public attention—and opposition—to the laws against homosexuality as they then stood. Emily Rachel Forster, who died in 1979. A West Country landowner and conservationist of colourful antecedents, his great-grandfather was Lieutenant-General Ampere-hour Lane Fox whose ethnographic collection, donated to Oxford University in 1883, formed the basis of the Pitt Rivers Museum named after him.
He served in World World War II, and in 1946 gained the substantive rank of Captain.
Wildeblood brought with him two young Royal Air Force servicemen, Edward McNally and John Reynolds. At the subsequent trial, the two airmen turned Queen"s Evidence and claimed there had been dancing and "abandoned behaviour" at the gathering.
Wildeblood said that it had in fact been "extremely dull". Montagu claimed that it was all remarkably innocent, saying: "We had some drinks, we danced, we kissed, that"s all." Arrested on 9 January 1954, in March of that year was brought before the British courts, charged with "conspiracy to incite certain male persons to commit serious offences with male persons" or "buggery". was charged along with Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and Peter Wildeblood. and Lord Montagu denied the charges and denied also that they were homosexual.
After an eight-day trial held at the Winchester Assizes, on 24 March 1954, and Wildeblood were sentenced to 18 months and Lord Montagu to 12 months in prison as a result of these and other charges.
Their case led eventually to the Wolfenden Report, which in 1957 recommended the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdom. Michael married Sonia Brownell, the widow of George Orwell, in 1958. spent much of his wealth on a lifetime of travel, financed by selling the most productive land from the Rushmore estate he inherited in Dorset. The gardens reopened to the public in 1995.
His role in the 1967 decriminalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdom was explored in the 2007 Channel Four docudrama A Very British Sex Scandal.
Michael died in December 1999, aged 82.