SOURCE: A review of The Firewalkers, in New Statesman & Society, April 12, 1985, p. 26.

In the following review of The Firewalkers, Everson comments favorably on the novel's writing and on the character Cedric. He warns readers that although the novel was reissued in the Gay Modern Classics series, it does not treat homosexuality as a subject.

The Firewalkers was first published in 1956 under the pseudonym ‘Frank Cauldwell’ after the British Council had given Francis King the choice of publishing it under his own name or remaining in their employ. This autobiographical novel describes the young narrator's encounters with Greece and with elderly eccentric Colonel Grecos. At the centre of the book, touchingly described, is the platonic but devoted relationship between Grecos and another misfit, the staggeringly ugly German youth Götz.

In his new introduction Francis King describes the ‘exhilarating sense of liberation’ he experienced as a ‘prim young man...