A BOOK by one of Malvern's most notorious residents of the 20th Century, lesbian writer Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall, features in newly-released official documents.

Medical advice in 1928 suggested that her novel The Well of Loneliness would encourage female homosexuality and lead to "a social and national disaster".

Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Chancellor Winston Churchill and Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks were determined to suppress the book, which describes how a girl, brought up in Malvern to enjoy boyish pursuits, finally falls in love with another woman.

"As she grows up, the people of Great Malvern draw away from her, aware of some indefinable thing that sets her apart," says the present day synopsis on the Amazon website.

Radclyffe-Hall lived at Highfield House, Malvern Wells, from 1902, and bought the White Cottage, Malvern Wells, in 1906, living there with her lover, Mabel Batten and Una, Lady Troubridge, who became her lover after Mabel's death.

Known to her friends as "John", she wore flamboyant masculine clothes, rode with the Ledbury Hunt and must have cut a remarkable dash in the Malvern of

the early 1900s, mixing with literary and artistic figures of the time, such as George Bernard Shaw and Edward Elgar.

While living in Malvern she converted to Catholicism and is believed to have attended St Wulstan's Church, Little Malvern, where Sir Edward Elgar is now buried.

Her controversial book The Well of Loneliness was strongly autobiographical. Just as she, herself, was known as Peter in her childhood, her heroine is known as Stephen, likes to fence and hunt, wears breeches and longs to cut her hair.

Documents show that the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Archibald Bodkin, wrote to several doctors in an effort to find support for his own strong revulsion against the book.

"I want to be able to call some gentlemen of undoubted knowledge, experience and position, who could inform the court of the results to those unfortunate women (as I deem them) who have proclivities towards lesbianism, or those wicked women (as I deem them) who voluntarily indulge in these practices - results destructive morally, physically and even perhaps mentally," he wrote to Sir Farquhar Buzzard.

Although Radclyffe-Hall was living in London with Una Troubridge by the time her novel was brought to the attention of the public prosecutor, the story is firmly based in Malvern.

"Not very far from Upton-on-Severn - between it, in fact, and the Malvern Hills - stands the country seat of the Gordons of Bramley, well-timbered, well-cottaged, well-fenced and well-watered..." begins the story that led to an obscenity trial in 1928.

The author, with her hair cropped like a man, attended the trial wearing a leather driving coat and Spanish riding hat, to hear the Bow Street magistrate rule that her work was "an obscene libel".

Her defence had been supported by Virginia Woolf, H G Wells, E M Forster and Vita Sackville-West, while George Bernard Shaw declined to testify against her, saying he himself was too immoral to have credibility in court.

The novel's raciest passage, "she kissed her full on the lips like a lover," may be completely inoffensive by today's standards, but iin documents recently discovered, a Harley Street doctor of the time believed it had excited a large amount of curiosity among women.

"I am afraid in many cases curiosity may lead to imitation and indulgence in practices which are believed to be somewhat extensive having regard to the very large excess in numbers of women over men," wrote Dr J A Hadfield.

Publishers Jonathan Cape were directed to destroy all copies of the book and, although they appealed against the decision, it was not until 1949, after the author's death, that the book was finally released.

Radclyffe-Hall also wrote poetry and songs, including Songs of the Malvern Hills, a cycle of seven pieces set to music in 1916 by Robert Coningsby Clarke and sung by Mabel Batten.

They have all been performed by soprano Gill Bradshaw and her husband, Geoffrey, who is organist at Holy Trinity Church, Malvern.

"Sometimes they are a little bit schmaltzy, but taken in the round they are lovely pieces," said Mr Bradshaw.

As a sign of changing times, their daughter, Miranda, a pupil at The Chase, is now studying The Well of Loneliness at A-level.