Robert Keable: Utterly Immoral WW1 Chaplain and Writer?

 Robert Keable was a famous novelist in the 1920s who is virtually unknown today. His first novel Simon Called Peter, about a WW1 chaplain's affair with a nurse, shocked many, was name checked in The Great Gatsby, and became a huge international best seller. What no one knew at the time was it was semi-autobiographical. His grandson tells the extraordinary story of the book and of the author's life. Robert Keable was a Cambridge educated priest who served as a missionary in Africa, before becoming chaplain to ill-treated black labourers in France. After the war he left the church, and his wife, and ran away to Tahiti with his mistress to live for a year in Paul Gauguin’s house. He stayed in Tahiti, built his own house, continued writing and married a Tahitian princess.