The Girls of Radcliff Hall

rdf:langString The Girls of Radcliff Hall

rdf:langString The Girls of Radcliff Hall is a roman à clef novel in the form of a lesbian girls' school story written in the 1930s by the British composer and bon-vivant Gerald Berners, the 14th Lord Berners, under the pseudonym "Adela Quebec", published and distributed privately in 1932. Berners depicts himself and his circle of friends, including Cecil Beaton and Oliver Messel, as lesbian schoolgirls at a school named "Radcliff Hall" (punning on the name of the famous lesbian writer). The indiscretions alluded to in the novel created an uproar among Berners's intimates and acquaintances. Cecil Beaton attempted to have all the copies destroyed. The novel subsequently disappeared from circulation, making it extremely rare. The story is not included in the Berners anthology Collected Tales and Fantasies, but it was reprinted, with some additional explanatory material, in 2000 thanks to the efforts of Dorothy Lygon. The characters and their real-life selves, according to an annotation in Cyril Connolly's copy of the novel, and endorsed by Robert Heber-Percy with the annotation "How did you guess?", are: Miss Carfax (this choice of name was presumably related to Sibyl Colefax, with whom Berners was acquainted): Lord Berners; Miss MacRogers: Jimmy Foster; Olive Mason: Oliver Messel; Cecily: Cecil Beaton; Daisy: David Herbert; Lizzie: Peter Watson; Millie: Robert Heber-Percy; Yoshiwara: Pavel Tchelitchew; Goussie: Christian Bérard; Helene de Troy: Jack Wilson; Vivian Dorrick: Doris Castlerosse; May: Robin Thomas (USA).