Mary Renault: The Charioteer

The book tells the story of Laurie Odell, a sensitive young man who falls in love first with the magnificently assured head prefect at his school, Ralph Lanyon (soon to be expelled for sexual misbehaviour with a younger boy), and then, having been wounded at Dunkirk, with Andrew Raynes, one of the young conscientious objectors who is working as a hospital orderly. It's largely thanks to this, of course, that the book was considered controversial: Renault's treatment of homosexuality was, for the time, startlingly straightforward ("Andrew, thought Laurie; the name slipped into place like the clear colour note in the foreground of a picture"). But the novel also appeared at a moment when prosecutions for homosexuality were on the rise following a period during which gay men had enjoyed a certain amount of freedom, social taboos having eased a little during the war. Just a few weeks after its publication, in fact, John Gielgud was arrested and charged with "importuning male persons for immoral purposes" (having endured the humiliations of his trial, he was fined just £10). No wonder, then, that some critics linked The Charioteer to the burgeoning movement for reform...

Rachel Cooke in The Observer on Mary Renault's The Charioteer.

One of the first British gay novels, probably the first from a major publisher.

Depending on how you define "gay novel".

First published in 1953, it is being reprinted by Virago Modern Classics next week.