Editing Hugh Gaitskell (section)

==Personal life==
According to [[Michael Bloch]], Gaitskell enjoyed a number of same-sex relationships while at Oxford, including with [[John Betjeman]], and in the 1930s in Vienna, with [[John Gunther]].<ref>{{Cite book | last = Bloch | first = Michael | title = Closet Queens | page=229 | publisher = Little, Brown | year = 2015 | isbn = 978-1408704127}}</ref>

Whilst a WEA lecturer in the late 1920s Gaitskell lived for a time with a local woman in Nottinghamshire. This is thought to have been his first adult relationship.<ref name="Matthew 2004, p.287" /> Until the early 1930s he rejected marriage as a "bourgeois convention".<ref>Williams 1985, p24</ref>

By the mid-1930s Gaitskell had formed a close relationship with a married woman, [[Dora Gaitskell, Baroness Gaitskell|Mrs. Dora Frost]] (née Creditor), who came out to join him in Vienna for the latter part of his stay there. Adultery still carried such stigma that she thought it best not to help him during his Parliamentary campaign in Chatham in 1935. After her divorce, hard to obtain prior to the passage of the [[Matrimonial Causes Act 1937]], they were eventually married on 9 April 1937, Gaitskell's thirty-first birthday, with Evan Durbin as best man.<ref>Williams 1985, p79</ref> Dora had a son, Raymond Frost (b 1925), from her first marriage.<ref>Williams 1985, p37</ref> The Gaitskells had two daughters: Julia, born in 1939, and Cressida, born in 1942. Dora Gaitskell became a Labour [[life peer]] a year after her husband's death and died in 1989.<ref name="ODNB">[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39851 William Rodgers: ''Gaitskell, (Anna) Dora, Baroness Gaitskell (1901–1989)'' rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 17 March 2013]</ref>

Gaitskell had a long-term affair in the 1950s with the socialite [[Ann Fleming (socialite)|Ann Fleming]], the wife of the writer [[Ian Fleming]].<ref name="Campbell 2006">{{cite news |last1=Campbell |first1=John |author-link1=John Campbell (biographer) |title=A House of ill repute |url=https://www.ft.com/content/a841b076-1232-11db-aecf-0000779e2340 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221210/https://www.ft.com/content/a841b076-1232-11db-aecf-0000779e2340 |archive-date=10 December 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |access-date=15 May 2019 |work=[[Financial Times]] |date=14 July 2006}}</ref> She wrote to [[Evelyn Waugh]] about a dinner party in 1958 in which Gaitskell and friends from Oxford days "held hands and recited verse because in early life they had loved each other in the same set", until the arrival of her husband "silenced the eminent homos", who "did not seem too pleased."<ref>{{Cite book | last = Bloch | first = Michael | title = Closet Queens | page=230 | publisher = Little, Brown | year = 2015 | isbn = 978-1408704127}}</ref> [[Woodrow Wyatt]] wrote that "there was a scintilla of platonic homosexuality in [Gaitskell's] affection for Tony [[Anthony Crosland|[Crosland]]]"<ref>{{Cite book | last = Woodrow | first = Wyatt | title = Confessions of an Optimist | page=179 | publisher = Collins | year = 1985}}</ref>

In private he was humorous and fun loving, with a love of ballroom dancing. This contrasted with his stern public image. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the [[Bilderberg meeting|Bilderberg Group]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/former-steering-committee-members.html |title=Former Steering Committee Members |work=bilderbergmeetings.org |publisher=[[Bilderberg meeting|Bilderberg Group]] |access-date=8 February 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140202095633/http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/former-steering-committee-members.html |archive-date=2 February 2014 |df=dmy-all }}</ref>