Biography
Roger Peyrefitte (17 August 1907 – 5 November 2000) was a French diplomat, bestselling novelist, non-fiction author, and an advocate for gay rights and pederasty.
Born in Castres, Tarn, into a middle-class bourgeois family, Peyrefitte attended Jesuit and Lazarist boarding schools before studying language and literature at the University of Toulouse. After graduating top of his class from the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris in 1930, he served as an embassy secretary in Athens from 1933 to 1938. Returning to Paris, he resigned in 1940 for personal reasons, was reinstated in 1943, and concluded his diplomatic career in 1945. His novels often explored controversial subjects, leading to conflicts with the Roman Catholic Church.
His 1943 debut novel, Les amitiés particulières, candidly recounted his homoerotic experiences in boarding school and won the prestigious prix Renaudot in 1944. The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 1964. On set, Peyrefitte met 12-year-old Alain-Philippe Malagnac d'Argens de Villèle, with whom he fell in love. Peyrefitte chronicled their relationship in Notre amour ("Our Love," 1967) and L'Enfant de cœur ("Child of the Heart," 1978). Malagnac later married entertainer Amanda Lear.
Known for courting controversy, Peyrefitte criticized the Vatican and Pope Pius XII in his 1953 book Les Clés de saint Pierre, earning him the nickname "Pope of the Homosexuals." This publication sparked a bitter dispute with François Mauriac, who threatened to resign from L'Express if it continued running advertisements for the book. The feud intensified with Mauriac's articles attacking Jean Cocteau's legacy due to his homosexuality and the release of the film adaptation of Les amitiés particulières. The conflict culminated in a vehement open letter from Peyrefitte accusing Mauriac of hypocrisy, labeling him a sham heterosexual who disparaged his own children and a closeted homosexual with a troubled past. Reportedly, Mauriac was deeply affected by the letter, bedridden for a week.
In April 1976, following Pope Paul VI's condemnation of premarital sex, masturbation, and homosexuality in the encyclical Persona Humana: Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics, Peyrefitte accused the Pope in a series of interviews of being a closet homosexual who had chosen his papal name after his lover. Although these claims appeared only in minor publications, Peyrefitte was both surprised and delighted when the Pope publicly addressed the accusations in St. Peter's Square, denouncing the "horrible and slanderous insinuations" and requesting prayers on his behalf.
In his 1951 work Les Ambassades, Peyrefitte exposed the inner workings of diplomacy. He also penned a gossip-filled account of Baron Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen's exile in Capri (L'Exilé de Capri, 1959) and translated Greek gay love poetry in La Muse garçonnière (The Boyish Muse), published by Flammarion in 1973.
