 Many of his novels centred on a protagonist who was struggling to find the moral and ethical and rational course of action in a situation that had spun wildly out of control.His characters often carried dark personal secrets, and were often conflicted — sometimes to the point of psychosis — by these burdens.He publicly mentioned his homosexuality, passingly and perhaps for the first time, on a broadcast of the programme "The Shulman File" in the 1970s, taking flabbergasted host Morton Shulman completely by surprise.