The Persian Boy: A Novel of Alexander the Great: A Virago Modern Classic

About Mary Renault

Mary Renault (1905-1983) was born in London and educated at St Hughs Oxford. She trained as a nurse at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary where she met her lifelong partner Julie Mullard. Her first novel Purposes of Love was published in 1937. In 1948 after North Face won a MGM prize worth $150000 she and Mullard emigrated to South Africa. There Renault was able to write forthrightly about homosexual relationships for the first time - in her masterpiece The Charioteer (1953) and then in her first historical novel The Last of the Wine (1956). Renault's vivid novels set in the ancient world brought her worldwide fame. In 2010 Fire From Heaven was shortlisted for the Lost Booker of 1970.