‘People have died because they’re queer. This isn't some philosophical debate, Teddy – it's our lives.’

Theo Lawder and Zac Bonneval meet in the army at the outbreak of World War II. They survive the horror of Dunkirk and become lovers. Theo goes to work at Bletchley Park, where he becomes friendly with Alan Turing. After the war he joins the Foreign Office, while Zac works for MI6. They make a good life together. But this is a time when homosexuals are criminalised, and the pressure of being outcasts in society takes a terrible toll. Zac becomes deeply depressed and goes away. Can their love survive society’s hatred?

Want to read it in other formats?

This book is also available on Kindle.

Fiona Graph was born in Sydney. Once she had obtained a degree in Psychology and Ancient History, she travelled before settling in north London. She worked variously as a psychologist, for an LGB organisation and as a librarian, before ending up at the Foreign Office. Her youthful interest in writing came back strongly about seven years ago. Things that Bounded, published in October 2020, was her first novel. Her second novel, Beloved Ghost, came out in May 2022.

You can find Fiona on Twitter at: @fiona_graph

‘Beloved Ghost is a beautiful love story, but it is so much more than that too. The backdrop to the tale, of the oppression meted out to ordinary queer Britons in the middle of the twentieth century, has been painstakingly researched and woven in to such powerful effect. Fiona Graph evokes the sights, smells and sounds of postwar life with great sensitivity and understanding, affording the reader a real and immersive sense of time travel. She has an eye and ear not just for the great sweeping events in the headlines, but also for the tiny details and intensely personal ways in which they play out. At a time when so much recent progress appears to be in danger of being undone, this is not just a great read, a tale of hope and courage, but a vital and moving clarion call too. We can never take our rights for granted’ - Mike Parker, author of the award-winning ‘On the Red Hill’

‘Fiona Graph's ambitious queer tale shows how gay lives helped shape the last century, and how these lives were also shaped, for better or worse, by changing attitudes. It renders an enjoyable, intimate and moving view of the shifting sands of culture’ - Joseph Galliano, co-founder, Queer Britain

Beloved Ghost

Fiona Graph

Also consider...

Bombweed

Gillian Fernandez Morton

Sandra Eden’s War

Mike Low

Things That Bounded

Fiona Graph