Childhood: Marcel was the son of an eminent Catholic doctor and his jewish wife and grew up in Paris near the Champs-Elysées. He had his first asthma attack at the age of nine and subsequently suffered badly from it for the rest of his life.

Work: Marcel published his first work, Les Plaisirs et les jours ("Pleasures and Days") in 1896 and the work for which he is immortal A la Recherche du Temps Perdu was published 1913 - 27 in twelve volumes. This later work was first translated into (now) rather dated Edwardian english by Scott-Moncrief under the title of Remembrance of Things Past which although accurate to the contents of the novel is not a literal translation of the french title which is Of The Search For Lost Time or In Search of Lost Time. The Scott-Moncrief version also softened a great deal of the gay content (but didn't actually cut it out) but more modern versions are available.

Friends & Relationships: His father died in 1903 and his mother in 1905. Hitherto he had mixed with the richest and highest possible society of France ( mostly in the Paris Town Houses or at the Country estates and Chateaux of his wealthy friends) and based many on his characters on real life people. The most famous example is that the hugely rich and outrageously camp Baron Charlus was based on a similar real life person called Robert de Montesquiou. After the deaths of his parents he increasingly withdrew from social life and lived mainly in a cork-lined room in his apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann, writing mostly at night. Marcel wasn't a great one for sexual partners but he did visit male brothels and had a brief fling with his chaueffeur. His last public appearance was at the New Year's Eve ball given by the discreetly homosexual Comte de Beaumont in 1921.
His Remembrance of Things Past was number 4 of the list of the top 100 gay books compiled in the USA in 1999. In 1999 the first volume, "Swann's Way" was 13th. on the list of sales by Amazon.com.uk, as reported by John Ezard in The Guardian, 23rd. October, 1999, page 3. Reccomended the biography Proust by George Painter.

Greatest Achievement: Undoubtedly A la Recherche du Temps Perdu considered by some to be the greatest novel of 20th Century

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