If you don’t recognise Kate Charlesworth’s name, you’ll deinitely recognise her work. A cartoonist, illustrator and writer born in Barnsley in 1950, her work has appeared in the likes of The Guardian, New Scientist, Pink Paper (RIP) and, of course, DIVA magazine. Her latest book, Sensible Footwear, is a graphic history of LGBTQI life from 1950 to present – and a bloody gorgeous one, too.
DIVA: How did the book come to be?
KATE CHARLESWORTH: Years ago, perhaps in the late 1990s, I had the idea of making an LGBTQI history of Britain. Everything, everyone, the whole enchilada between the covers of one book – and in pictures. I thought it was needed because so many events – in their moment, often profoundly important – are overwritten by the constant stream of news and history. The minutiae of lives and times are even more vulnerable to time’s arrow, and I wanted to make a record of at least some of our LGBTQI lives, as individuals and communities – that parallel universe invisible to the world of heteronormativity. A few years later, realising Plan A (Everything) was plainly impossible, I made Plan B (A Lot Less Work – or so I thought). I decided to use the thread of personal memoir as a linking device to the history; 1950, when I was born, to the present date. Still aiming to cover the LGBTQI spectrum, but from my very definite lesbian perspective.