A Visit From Viscountess Boudicca

Click here to book for The Gentle Author’s Tours Viscountess Boudicca Ten years ago today, on August 3rd 2016, Viscountess Boudicca was decanted from her council flat in Bethnal Green to Uttoxeter. Last week, she paid a rare visit to London, her first in seven years, en route to visit her mother in Braintree. We met at the Bishopsgate Institute and it provided the opportunity for Viscountess to give me an account of her Uttoxeter years. Regrettably, she has encountered a similar level of grief there on account of her difference – harassment from neighbours exacerbated by lack of sympathy or any support from the authorities – just as in Bethnal Green. Yet throughout it all she retains an heroic level of moral courage and resilience, thanks in no small part to her colourful private life involving Guy Fawkes, Henry VIII and Erik Hosebonde. “The trouble with Uttoxeter is that I gave notice to quit a month after I arrived, September 2016, and the woman from the council said, ‘I knew that…