Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are.
— Gordon to Gilbert, 1940
A forbidden love. A hidden history. A legacy of hope.
A forbidden love. A hidden history. A legacy of hope.
The Discovery
Then All The World was founded in 2018 by Mark Hignett, curator of Oswestry Town Museum in Shropshire.
The story began with a chance find. While browsing eBay for museum artefacts, Mark stumbled across three wartime love letters addressed to a soldier training at Park Hall Camp in Oswestry. Intrigued, he purchased them to feature in a display at the museum.
More letters soon appeared for sale online — and after losing one set to a higher bidder, Mark became determined to collect every remaining piece of the correspondence. He succeeded, building a remarkable archive of over 1000 letters of which approximately 600 were love letters.
Alongside Harriet and a dedicated group of museum volunteers, Mark began the painstaking task of transcribing them. At first, they believed the letters were from a woman — each signed by “Your ever loving G.” But as the story unfolded, they made a stunning discovery:
The letters were between Gilbert Bradley and Gordon Bowsher — two men, both serving in the military at a time when homosexuality was illegal, and gay soldiers could be court-martialled or worse.
These deeply personal, passionate letters revealed a forbidden love that had remained hidden for over 70 years. Their discovery not only shed light on an untold chapter of LGBTQ+ history, but also touched the hearts of the local community — opening minds and sparking conversations about love, courage, and acceptance.
Today, there is a permanent display in Oswestry Town Museum, where visitors can read them for themselves and learn more about this extraordinary story. If you’re ever in town, Mark, Harriet, or one of the museum’s lovely volunteers would be more than happy to show you the display and share the journey of Then All The World with you.
Between 1939 and 1945, Gilbert Bradley and Gordon Bowsher exchanged about 600 love letters — written in secret, sent across military camps, and filled with longing, humour, heartbreak, and hope.
Their story is now preserved in Oswestry Town Museum, offering an unprecedented glimpse into a forbidden relationship during wartime Britain.
We are carefully transcribing and publishing a selection of the letters here, so that Then All The World may finally see how deeply these two men loved one another.
“There is nothing more than I desire in life but to have you with me constantly… I can see, or I imagine I can see, what your mother and father’s reaction would be… The rest of the world have no conception of what our love is – they do not know that it is love.”
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