Politician, gossip-columnist, promiscuous homo-sexual and alleged double-agent, a friend of such disparate characters as Aleister Crowley, Edith Sitwell, Nye Bevan and Mick Jagger, Tom Driberg was not only one of the most colourful figures in London's political, literary and social life for over forty years, but also a mysterious and intriguing man of affairs who embodied many of the contradictions and ambiguities of his time.
At Oxford he was the friend of Auden, Betjeman, Hugh Gaitskell and Evelyn Waugh; on Beaverbrook's Express in the Thirties he invented the modern gossip-column while simultaneously working for the Communist Party; a close friend of Guy Burgess, he was widely suspected of being a double-agent, serving both British Intelligence and the KGB; as chairman of the Labour Party in the 1950s he was closely involved in the lacerating struggles between the Bevanites and the Right over such questions as nuclear disarmament; as a war correspondent he saw action in conflicts from Spain to Korea. A keen High Churchman, he continually risked prosecution and disgrace by his compulsive `cottaging' in public lavatories; an uncompromising socialist on the Left of the Labour Party, he was also an ardent socialite with a Georgian mansion in Essex.
When he died in 1976 Tom Driberg - by then elevated to the title of Lord Bradwell - left behind an unfinished memoir which was published the following year as Ruling Passions. It created a sensation with its explicit descriptions of his tireless sexual pursuit. But Ruling Passions told only half the story. Now, a decade later, Francis sheen presents the complete picture for the first time.
Contains 8 pages of b/w illustrations.
