29 Facts About Lytton Strachey

Giles Lytton Strachey was an English writer and critic.

Lytton Strachey was named Giles Lytton after an early 16th-century Gyles Strachey and the first Earl of Lytton, who had been a friend of Richard Strachey's when he was Viceroy of India in the late 1870s.

When Lytton Strachey was four years old the family moved from Stowey House to 69 Lancaster Gate, north of Kensington Gardens.

Lady Lytton Strachey was an enthusiast for languages and literature, making her children perform their own plays and write verse from an early age.

Lytton Strachey was educated at a series of schools, beginning at Parkstone, Dorset.

Lytton Strachey told his mother how much he liked dressing as a woman in real life to confuse and entertain others.

Lady Lytton Strachey decided in 1893 that her son should start his more serious education and sent him to Abbotsholme School in Rocester, Derbyshire, where pupils were required to do manual work every day.

Lytton Strachey's health seems to have improved during the three years he spent at Leamington, although various illnesses continued to plague him.

When Lytton Strachey turned 17 in 1897, Lady Lytton Strachey decided that he was ready to leave school and go to university, but because she thought he was too young for Oxford she decided that he should first attend a smaller institution, the University of Liverpool.

Lytton Strachey was admitted as a Pensioner at Trinity College, Cambridge, on 30 September 1899.

Lytton Strachey became an Exhibitioner in 1900 and a Scholar in 1902.

Lytton Strachey won the Chancellor's Medal for English Verse in 1902 and was given a BA degree after he had won a second class in the History Tripos in June 1903.

Lytton Strachey did not however take leave of Trinity but remained until October 1905 to work on a thesis that he hoped would gain him a fellowship.

Lytton Strachey was often ill and had to leave Cambridge repeatedly to recover from the palpitations that affected him.

Lytton Strachey belonged to the Conversazione Society, the Cambridge Apostles to which Tennyson, Hallam, Maurice, and Sterling had once belonged.

Lytton Strachey lived there until 1916 and it was there that he wrote the first three parts of Eminent Victorians.

Lytton Strachey was greatly influenced by Dostoyevsky, whose novels he had been reading and reviewing as they appeared in Constance Garnett's translations.

In 1916 Lytton Strachey was back in London, living with his mother at 6 Belsize Park Gardens, Hampstead, where she had now moved.

From 1904 to 1914 Lytton Strachey contributed book and theatre reviews to The Spectator.

Lytton Strachey spent much of the war with like-minded people such as Lady Ottoline Morrell and the Bloomsburys.

Lytton Strachey continued to live at Tidmarsh until 1924 when he moved to Ham Spray House near Marlborough, Wiltshire.

Lytton Strachey died of stomach cancer on 21 January 1932, aged 51.

Lytton Strachey spoke openly about his homosexuality with his Bloomsbury friends and had relationships with a variety of men including Ralph Partridge.

Lytton Strachey met the painter Dora Carrington during the First World War and they had a strong but platonic relationship thereafter until his death.

Lytton Strachey's letters, edited by Paul Levy, were published in 2005.

Lytton Strachey is said to have been the inspiration behind the character of St John Hirst in her novel The Voyage Out.

Lytton Strachey was portrayed by Jonathan Pryce in the film Carrington, which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival that year, while Pryce won Best Actor for his performance.

Lytton Strachey was portrayed by Ed Birch in the 2015 mini-series Life in Squares.

Lytton Strachey was portrayed by Simon Russell Beale in the 2020 BBC Radio 3 play Elizabeth and Essex by Robin Brooks.