Partner Mary Renault
Queer Places:
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
3 Atholl Rd, Camps Bay, Cape Town, 8040, Sudafrica
Constance Bella “Julie” Mullard (1912–1996) was an English nurse. Mary Renault began training as a nurse at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary in 1933. During her training, she met Mullard, with whom she established a life-long romantic relationship. Her novel The Friendly Young Ladies (1943), which is about a lesbian relationship between a writer and a nurse, seems to have been inspired by her own relationship with Mullard. In 1948, after her novel Return to Night won an MGM prize worth $150,000, she and Mullard immigrated to South Africa, where they remained for the rest of their lives. There, according to Proud, they found a community of gay expatriates who had "escaped the repressive attitudes towards homosexuality in Britain for the comparatively liberal atmosphere of Durban.... Mary and Julie found themselves able to set up home together in this new land without causing the outrage they had sometimes provoked at home."
My published books:
