Roger Peyrefitte born 17 August 1907 (d. 2000)Roger Peyrefitte was born in Castres in south western France and educated in Catholic boarding schools in the region. The most lasting effect of this religious education was his life-long hostility to the Roman Catholic Church. He went on to study at the University of Toulouse and in Paris.
He had his first homosexual experience at eighteen and thereafter led an active sex life, hunting for teenage boys across Europe. He also had occasional affairs with women, whom (by his own account) he introduced to the delights of anal sex.
Peyrefitte entered the French diplomatic service in 1931 and served as secretary at the French embassy in Athens from 1933 to 1938. Forced to resign in October 1940 because of his relations with a fourteen-year-old boy, he was recalled to duty three years later to serve the collaborationist Vichy government in German-occupied Paris.
After the Liberation, France's provisional government dismissed him on suspicion of collaborationism in February 1945. Peyrefitte later appealed his dismissal and the Council of State finally ruled in his favour in 1962, but the Foreign Ministry refused to reintegrate him. He was by then, in any case, a professional writer with no desire to return to state service.
Peyrefitte's first, best, and best-known novel, Les Amitiés Particulières (Special Friendships), tells the story of love between two teenage boys in a Catholic boarding school. The book may have been based on his own experience. Peyrefitte later explained, 'I was a young diplomat, and I wanted to show the origin of those things [i.e. homosexuality]: that it was not simply under the influence of a disgusting adult that young boys could feel that sort of attraction.'
Critically well-received, the novel won the Prix Renaudot. It caused a first scandal when it appeared in 1944 and a second when made into a movie in 1964.During the making of the film, Peyrefitte befriended a fourteen-year-old extra, Alain-Philippe Malagnac, who eventually became the great love of his life as well as his secretary and business partner.
The success of the Peyrefitte's first novel, the resulting notoriety, and his dismissal from the foreign service coalesced to lead him to devote himself entirely to literary pursuits.
In the course of his long life (he died at 93), Peyrefitte published dozens of books, including numerous novels, a three-volume fictionalised biography of Alexander the Great, and two volumes on Voltaire (whom he claimed to have been homosexual). He also wrote about Baron Jacques d'Adelsward-Fersen's exile in Capri (L'Exilé de Capri, 1959) and translated Greek pederastic love poetry.
Much of his work provoked scandal for his wide-ranging accusations and implications that various people (and popes) were homosexuals, Nazi-collaborators, or both.
In two volumes of oral memoirs (1977 and 1980), he divulged the secrets (especially sexual) of numerous celebrities, including himself. Among those he portrayed in a negative light were Alain Delon, André Gide, and Marcel Proust.
Peyrefitte appeared to value the commercial success of his books far more than he cared about their quality.
Peyrefitte was certainly no radical gay liberationist, but he did support gay businesses - he financed a gay nightclub, Le Colony, and Paris's first gay sex bar, Le Bronx, both of which opened on the Rue Sainte-Anne in late 1973.
Peyrefitte revelled in the fame and wealth that success brought him.
His political views were deeply conservative: 'I have a profound respect for order. . . . I hate all revolutionary movements. . . . I am too bourgeois . . . to approve of . . . the enemies of the bourgeoisie.' In his last years, he came out in open support of the extreme right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen and his xenophobic and homophobic party, the National Front.
Peyrefitte died on November 5, 2000, in Paris, after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.