Terence Rattigan was one of the most popular English playwrights of the twentieth century. From the late 1930s until the late 1950s Rattigan ruled London's West End and was the author of four of the greatest plays of the period: The Deep Blue Sea, Separate Tables, The Browning Version and The Winslow Boy. By all outward accounts, his life was one of luxury and refinement.

The vision the public saw was of the playboy whose social whirl never ended. This image, though, could not be further from the truth. In private, Rattigan was a man tormented by fears and determined to conceal his pain and suffering, his loneliness and his homosexuality behind a polished facade of relaxation and wit. Until now, no biographer has been able to fully unravel the complexities of Rattigan's genius.

Geoffrey Wansell is the first writer to have been given full access to thousands of private papers and to have talked at length to many of Rattigan's friends and lovers, some of whom have previously kept silent.