Radcliffe, the third published novel by David Storey, is longer and more ambitious than its two predecessors, This Sporting Life (1960) and Flight into Camden (1960). Where these earlier novels were largely realistic, Radcliffe incorporates realism within a high Gothic mode and its style is intense and dramatic, sometimes melodramatic. The novel focuses on the tortured physical and emotional passion between the fragile Leonard Radcliffe and the muscular Victor Tolson and builds to a corpse-strewn climax.
Storey’s earlier novels, This Sporting Life and Flight into Camden, had central characters who were also first-person narrators, but Radcliffe has a third-person narrator, although not an omniscient one. Even with its title character, the novel rarely offers any in-depth evocation and analysis of his thoughts and feelings; it only goes fleetingly into the minds of some secondary characters...
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Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "Radcliffe". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 May 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2489, accessed 13 December 2025.]
