Likened by screenwriter Mark Gatiss to a homosexual Samuel Pepys, George Lucas – not the Star Wars one – kept an exhaustive set of diaries throughout his long and quietly revolutionary life. Gifted them in George’s will, journalist Hugo Greenhalgh has combed through millions of words to produce The Diaries Of Mr. Lucas: a deeply compelling portrait of an inwardly prim, outwardly promiscuous man growing old in time with the 20th century.

Raised by parents who openly despised his sexuality, Mr. Lucas was kicked out of the army for being caught with another man. Returning to London, he struggled to balance a staid, respectable job at the Board Of Trade with a predilection for rent boys and a toxic, love-hate relationship with an Irish gangster and known associate of the Kray twins.

An austere Tory with a melancholy temperament and a penchant for buttered toast, Mr. Lucas makes an unlikely gay hero – his entries often more in the vein of Charles Pooter than Anne Lister. Yet, through the humdrum shines a fascinating account of the homosexual experience before it fought its way above ground. The love that dare not speak its name, as written by a lonely man hoping to immortalise his.