Radclyffe Hall will always be famous for The Well of Loneliness, her groundbreaking novel of lesbian love. But it was Adam’s Breed which won her the most acclaim at the time of publication in 1926, winning both the James Tait and the Femina Vie Heureuse prize for best English novel.

Set in London’s Soho around the turn of the twentieth century, a child is born to his Italian mother above her parents’ salumeria, or delicatessen. She dies giving birth, and this is a crime which her mother, the steely Teresa Boselli, can never forgive. She and her husband name the boy Gian Luca. Her mother would not reveal the identity of his father, and he is never given a surname.

As he grows up he is sent to the English school, rather than to the catholic school along with the other Italian children in the neighbourhood. Radclyffe Hall paints a vivid picture of the Italian community in Soho, traces of which survive to this day. The Boselli shop is hung with salamis, great bowls of olives, pasta, bottles of chianti. Gian Luca is surrounded by plenty – but he longs for the love of his grandmother, which she refuses to give. His life becomes a search for identity, for a religion, for a country – he searches for a father figure, he returns to Italy, but he can find nowhere to belong. Despite success in life – he becomes head waiter at the smart Doric restaurant – and the devotion of his wife, Gian Luca suffers a breakdown. The appetites by which he is surrounded come to repel him. Nothing can feed his vast emptiness. When war breaks out he is sent to manage the army canteen. Food continues to haunt him, and prevents him from fighting for his adopted country.

Lack of maternal love and isolation in childhood are themes which runs through all of Radclyffe Hall’s work, and Adam’s Breed is her most brilliant and complete exploration of this trauma. Beautifully written, imbued with sadness and despair, it is nonetheless a compelling, redemptive novel, with themes that resonate to this day.