In a sense, The Charioteer (1953), the story of two young gay servicemen in the 1940s who try to model their relationship on the ideals expressed in Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium, is a warm-up for Renault's historical novels. They include a pair of novels about the mythological hero Theseus and a trilogy about the career of Alexander the Great. Her historical novels are all set in ancient Greece. In addition to vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato and Alexander the Great, she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander. Mary Renault was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary Renault including rare images of the author. Renault’s story of Theseus continues with the sequel The Bull from the Sea. Richly imbued with the spirit of its time, this is a page-turner as well as a daring act of imagination. The story follows Theseus’s adventures from Troizen to Eleusis, where the death in the book’s title is to take place, and from Athens to Crete, where he learns to jump bulls and is named king of the victims. Drawing on modern scholarship and archaeological findings at Knossos, Mary Renault’s Theseus is an utterly lifelike figure-a king of immense charisma, whose boundless strivings flow from strength and weakness-but also one steered by implacable prophecy. What the founder-hero might have been in real life is another question, brilliantly explored in The King Must Die. In myth, Theseus was the slayer of the child-devouring Minotaur in Crete. She shows us their strangeness discerning, sure-footed, challenging our values, piquing our curiosity, she leads us through an alien landscape that moves and delights us.” -Hilary Mantel She does not pretend the past is like the present, or that the people of ancient Greece were just like us. “Mary Renault is a shining light to both historical novelists and their readers.

The king must die renault