Brought to you by Pistol PeteSiegfried Sassoon was an English poet and author. He became known as a writer of satirical anti-war verse during World War I, but later won acclaim for his prose work. The novel, Regeneration, by Pat Barker, is a fictionalized account of this period in Sassoon's life, and was made into a film starring Jonathan Pryce as W H R Rivers, the psychiatrist responsible for Sassoon's 'recovery'. Rivers became a kind of surrogate father to the troubled young man, and his sudden death in 1922 was a major blow to Sassoon.
After serving in World War I, Sassoon became a pacifist. Meanwhile, he was beginning to practice his homosexuality more openly, embarking on an affair with the artist, Gabriel Atkin. He also had a succession of love affairs with men, including the actor Ivor Novello; Novello's former lover, the actor Glen Byam Shaw; German aristocrat Prince Philipp of Hesse; the writer Beverley Nichols; and Stephen Tennant.
He remains an enigmatic figure in gay history: in his younger years homosexual but later, he lived comfortably as a conservative, religious, aristocratic heterosexual.
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