Lytton Strachey born 1 March 1880 (d. 1932)Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit.
At Cambridge, he found his niche and made lasting friends, including those who would later form the nucleus of the Bloomsbury Group. It was in this milieu that Strachey wrote about and spoke openly of his homosexuality.
From 1904 to 1914 he contributed book and drama reviews to The Spectator magazine, published poetry, and wrote an important work of literary criticism, Landmarks in French Literature (1912). During World War 1, he was a conscientious objector, and spent much time with like-minded people such as Lady Ottoline Morrell and the 'Bloomsberries'.His first great success, and his most famous achievement, was Eminent Victorians (1918), a collection of four short biographies of Victorian heroes. With a dry wit, he exposed the human failings of his subjects and what he saw as the hypocrisy at the centre of Victorian morality. This work was followed in the same style by Queen Victoria (1921).
Though Strachey spoke openly about his homosexuality with his Bloomsbury friends (he had a relationship with John Maynard Keynes, who also was part of the Bloomsbury group), it was not publicly revealed until (1967-8), in a biography by Michael Holroyd.His unusual relationship with the painter Dora Carrington (she loved him, but Strachey was much more interested in her husband Ralph Partridge, as well as various other young men) was portrayed in the film Carrington (1995). Jonathan Pryce won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Strachey in this film.
He died of (then undiagnosed) stomach cancer at age 51 at his country house near Hungerford in Berkshire.
Painting of Giles Lytton Strachey by Vanessa Bell