Roger Peyrefitte was a French diplomat, writer, and advocate for gay rights and pederasty. Born on August 17, 1907, in Castres, Tarn, to a middle-class family, Peyrefitte studied language and literature in the University of Toulouse and graduated first in his class from the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris in 1930.
Peyrefitte worked as an embassy secretary in Athens from 1933 to 1938 and later served as a diplomat in Paris until his resignation in 1940 due to personal reasons. He was reintegrated into the diplomatic corps in 1943 and retired in 1945.
Peyrefitte's writing often dealt with controversial themes, particularly his own homoerotic experiences in boarding school, which he wrote about in his 1943 novel Les amitiés particulières. The book won the prix Renaudot in 1944 and was later adapted into a film.
