In her novels The Last of the Wine, The Bull from the Sea and The Persian Boy, Mary Renault wrote so frankly about homosexuality that some readers thought she must be a man. In fact Renault was the pseudonym for Mary Challans, a remarkable and private woman. Born in London, she spent most of her life in South Africa. She began as a bookish, withdrawn child and became a standard bearer for the sexual revolution. She abandoned the academic world for nursing and when she won an MGM award she embarked for South Africa wih her friend and lifelong companion, Julie Mullard. She never returned. This is her biography.