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2 unusual facts about Mary Renault


Downs Banks

The area was well known to the author Mary Renault, whose parents moved to live nearby in the early 1930s.

William Woodthorpe Tarn

In fact, portrayals of Alexander in some high school and college world history text books still reflect Tarn more than anyone who has come after". Reames also saw Tarn's strong influence in Mary Renault's trilogy of historical novels about Alexander - though Renault's acknowledged Alexander's homo-erotic tendencies, while Tarn had regarded references to them in ancient sources as "defamations" which the Macedonian king had to be defended against.


Quintus Curtius Rufus

Historical novelist Mary Renault, in the preface to her biography of Alexander Fire from Heaven, discusses the various sources which she studied in preparation for her work, expressing considerable exasperation with Curtius who "had access to invaluable primary sources, now lost", which in her opinion he misunderstood and garbled.


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