12-14-2025, 06:20 PM
A leading light of gay historical fiction is GMP's Chris Hunt. His protagonists and their sex lives tend to be idealised, and the pace is Boy's Own, but Hunt's storylines pursue historical accuracy. Like that late, great doyenne of straight romantic fiction, Georgette Heyer, he obviously does a great deal of research; his books have masses of period detail, although it can sometimes make them seem set in an olde worlde theme park.
Also like Georgette Heyer, Chris Hunt proved retiring and difficult to get hold of, although he eventually agreed to interview by letter - which is perhaps more in keeping with the period world which he inhabits. Hunt began writing in the Eighties. His first published book was Street Lavender (1986). Set in 1880s London, it follows the story of Willie Smith who uses his cherubic young charms - he turns his first trick when he's about 10 as far as one can gather, in return for two ripe peaches - to escape the grinding poverty of the East End slums for a life of rent-boy decadence in the salons of the West End. But he finally finds true love in the arms of a decent older man (a classic Hunt conclusion) back in the East End, helping others to escape poverty by less desperate means than his own.
"The greatest influences on my writing to begin with were the swashbuckling films which I saw as a child in the Fifties," he says. "Errol Flynn and Stewart Grainger were particular heroes. Also around that time, John Buchan, whose Richard Hannay says, 'I have always had a boy's weakness for a yarn.' Later I acquired an English degree, and was influenced by medieval and Elizabethan literature, Thomas Hardy, Dickens, various historical novelists, Mary Renault and Daphne du Maurier."
Quote: Much of the language is poetic and lyrical, and there were many passages I read over and over again in pleasure at their beauty. It's also one of the most historically accurate novels I've ever read. Hunt's research is extremely impressive.
Don’t be turned off by the GODAWFUL cover! Chris Hunt is a very fine writer, and should definitely be better known. Gaveston is very well researched, and beautifully written. The prose is lavish, some might think excessively so, but I think its richness fits the subject matter. The narrative voice is distinctive and the characters very believable, though less likable than I would like them to be (and less likable than I think Edward and Piers are likely to have been in reality.) That said, Hunt’s Piers and Edward do get better as they grow up. I imagine Piers and Edward to have been sexually faithful to each other, so when they turn out not to be so in Hunt’s version of their story, I found it a little jarring. Yet, all in all, I think this is a marvellous book, and certainly too good and too well written to remain confined purely to a gay male audience. The author’s ability to transport you to the Middle Ages is uncanny, and shows considerable mastery of the subject matter.