Grayson Perry a transvestite. At the age of 15 he moved in with his father's family in Chelmsford, where he began to go out dressed as a woman. When he was discovered by his father he said he would stop but his stepmother told everyone about it and a few months later threw him out. He returned to his mother and stepfather at Great Bardfield. Perry frequently appears in public dressed as a woman, and he has described his female alter-ego, "Claire", variously as "a 19th century reforming matriarch, a middle-England protester for "No More Art", an aero-model-maker, or an Eastern European
Grayson Perry Welcome In!" and "I Found Myself in the Art World", were broadcast in October and November 2013 on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. He expanded the lectures into a book, "Playing to the Gallery: Helping Contemporary Art in its Struggle to Be Understood" (2014). He guest edited an issue of "New Statesman" in 2014, entitled "The Great White Male Issue". In 2017 Perry gave the inaugural Orwell Lecture in the North for The Orwell Foundation, entitled I've read all the academic texts on empathy. Grayson Perry Grayson Perry (born 24 March 1960) is an English contemporary artist.