Julia Grant (1954-2019), by Eric Harlow, 1980

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Grant, Julia Anne (1954–2019), trans rights activist, author, and ceramics distributor, was born George William Roberts at Victoria Hospital, Blackpool, Lancashire, on 23 September 1954, the eldest of eight children of George Frederick (Phillip) Roberts, a deep sea trawlerman, and his wife, Agnes Jessie (Jessica), née Moon. The family lived at 1 Hathaway Road, Fleetwood, a salt-rusted fishing port on north-west England’s Fylde coast. Phillip was a violent drunk, and Jessica was an alcoholic. Home life was chaotic. Eight-year-old George fought off Phillip when he tried to rape him on one of the brief visits back from the treacherous north Atlantic. Jessica became depressed and attempted suicide. The children spent periods in a council-run children’s home; Julia later recalled caring for her seven younger brothers and sisters: ‘I acted as mum to the kids, cooking and cleaning’ (personal knowledge). George believed he was gay, after regularly having sex with men for money to buy sweets and food for his siblings.

Julia’s survival sense, from her early years as George, powered her determination to live life on her own terms and with her own sense of identity; however, it provoked others or defied convention. It shaped her whole life and the choices she made. George left home and school as soon as he could, aged fifteen, joined the navy, and served time in prison. A marriage to a woman in the Netherlands, where he had moved, produced two children, but the relationship soon collapsed. He said there was no contact with them thereafter. By 1978 he was working in the NHS as a catering manager in London. At night he performed as a drag artist. ‘Je ne regrette rien’ by Edith Piaf was a favourite lip-synch song and its message reflected Julia’s views through to life’s end. George decided he was a woman in a man’s body. He would seek gender realignment, but first contacted the BBC, in the belief that appearing in a documentary might reduce prejudice towards his transition to a woman. Julia was the first transsexual, as they were then called, to share her story on television as it unfolded in intimate and unflinching detail in a series of five BBC documentaries. Broadcast between 1979 and 1999, and known as A Change of Sex, the films attracted large audiences. Most British people in the 1970s had little or no awareness of what was involved in ‘changing sex’. As a pioneer, Julia profoundly influenced how Britain viewed transgender people.

A precondition for a male to access any surgery at the Charing Cross Hospital unit for transsexuals was to live, work, and dress as a woman for a year. George adopted the name Julia Anne Grant, which had a ‘good Scottish ring to it’ (Pearson, ‘George’, Inside Story, 25 June 1979). The NHS psychiatrist who ran the clinic let the BBC film all his consultations with Julia, providing he remained unseen and unidentified. Later, others revealed he was John Randell. He grilled Julia in a pompous voice charged with arrogance and sarcasm as he expressed remarkably dated and stereotypical attitudes towards women, even for the 1970s.

The week before the broadcast of the first film, some tabloids expressed hostility towards Julia and the film. However, Julia’s determination and earthy humour while overcoming problems, notably her treatment by Randell, in the unflinching gaze of the cameras as she became the ‘woman I want to be’, convinced many viewers that her cause was legitimate. The BBC received an enormous positive postbag supporting Julia and the film.

In 1979, as filming continued, Julia was living with Amir, a handsome political refugee in his twenties, who had fled persecution in Iraq as a Bahai. He accepted Julia as a woman and their relationship thrived. Julia wanted to progress the relationship sexually. The operation couldn’t wait. In a series of combative encounters with Randell, he condescendingly dismissed Julia’s ambitions. She wasn’t demure or feminine enough in his view, and her assertiveness infuriated him. Julia was quick-witted, with a blisteringly sharp tongue when cornered, and when physically threatened could resort to her fists.

Unlike many people, Julia knew exactly who she was and what she wanted to be. Why should anyone tell her what to do? Certainly not a psychiatrist. Julia, always flexible in her acceptance of authority and rules, acted unilaterally. She had breast implants in a private clinic in Hove with surgeon Nigel Porter. Randell raged at her, and Julia realized he would not support her full genital surgery and decided she couldn’t wait any longer. Porter’s colleague, surgeon Michael Royle, was also sympathetic to Julia’s predicament. They agreed to operate.

Julia wasn’t afraid of any risks from the long and demanding operation. Joking as the cameras followed her into the operating theatre, she waved into the camera and said, ‘Bye Mum’, before the anaesthetic took over and the cameras filmed the complex surgery. The next day she woke ecstatic but in great pain. She said the surgery ‘was the best thing I ever did’ (personal knowledge), a conviction she held until she died—this, despite revealing years later that she collapsed, bleeding and unconscious several months after the operation. Mistakenly treated in hospital casualty as a biological woman having a miscarriage, she woke up to discover the treatment had damaged her surgery and sexual intercourse would be impossible.

With rising fame and regular press attention, Julia, normally unconcerned about how people viewed her, became fearful and embarrassed. What would people say if they found out what had gone wrong? So she kept it a secret. She didn’t tell Amir why sex was not possible or seek medical help. Her life’s low point hit when her relations with Amir fractured and he left her for another woman before moving abroad. It devastated Julia. He was the love of her life. For years, she tried to trace him without success and she eventually assumed he had died fighting in the Iraq—Iran War.

Julia’s challenging transition to life as a woman, employment issues, the challenges of owning various cafés, bars, and ceramics businesses, and the eventual revelation of her secret, all appeared in the ongoing television series. In 1999 the last film found Julia living in Manchester, running a busy gay show bar and intent on marrying Alan Sunderland. During the filming she finally agreed to be examined again by Michael Royle. He reassured her that he could repair the damage. However, after consulting Alan, Julia felt no more surgery was needed. They were content with how things were. A church blessing followed, and Julia considered herself married, although she resented not being able to marry legally. She supported campaigns to improve LGBTQ+ rights, and finally legislation to allow marriage for trans and gay people arrived in 2014.

Following problems with her business, Julia and Alan moved to the Creuse region of France, where Julia ran a successful wholesale ceramics business and taught pottery painting. They assimilated, and the locals called her la madame anglaise, which tickled her sense of humour. For some ten years it seemed as if she had landed a happy ending. However, love rarely ran smoothly for Julia. Alan ate breakfast one morning, she recounted, and then, without a word, left. She never saw him again. After this, she moved to Spain with her beloved Cairn terriers, ran a hotel, and set up Gay Pride in Benidorm.

Bowel cancer led Julia to return to the UK in 2015, where she settled in Penwortham, near Preston and her family. Her health deteriorated with multiple health conditions, including failing kidneys from exceeding the safe dosage of female hormones in her twenties. However, she continued to contribute to NHS and police policy and training initiatives and counselled younger people who identified as trans. Some of her later views were controversial to certain members of the trans community. She believed that gender reassignment does not solve trans people’s other pre-existing non-gender problems. Nor, she contended, should children, suspected of being trans, receive hormone treatment or surgery until they were old enough to make their own minds up as adults, independent of their parents.

Many articles and other television appearances followed the television series. Julia wrote two autobiographies and tirelessly campaigned for improved services and better understanding for trans and gay people. As her death loomed in late 2018 from several worsening health conditions, she tied up loose ends, closely supported by her siblings. She spent the long nights bedbound listening to the BBC World Service, her favourite radio station.

Julia Grant courageously set her course in life, navigating the rough storms she encountered. ‘It was my choice’, she said two weeks before her death (personal knowledge), referring to the surgery, living as a woman as she defined it, and then, at the end, choosing to leave the hospital and only accept palliative care. A few years previously, she had discovered that Amir was living in the USA, worked for the American government, and was married with children. They spoke for the last time shortly before she died, at St Catherine’s Hospice, Preston, Lancashire, on 2 January 2019. During her life she had witnessed a massive expansion in the trans community, and greater acceptance and understanding than once seemed imaginable. Nevertheless, she feared there would be a reaction against trans people and trans rights with the rise of populist politicians in the USA, Europe, and elsewhere.