Laurie Odell, wounded and evacuated from Dunkirk, recovers in a wartime English hospital while reconnecting with Ralph Lanyon, the older schoolmate who once gave him a copy of Plato's Phaedrus, and falling for Andrew, a conscientious-objector orderly; the novel traces Laurie's divided loyalties and his effort to reconcile the Phaedrus's ideal of love with the messy realities of his own life.
Books mentioned in The Charioteer (6)
Phaedrus by Plato: “"The spine said The Phaedrus of Plato." ... Lanyon gives Laurie the book at school and Laurie carries and rereads it through his years in the war.”
Hamlet by William Shakespeare: “"Hamlet had been the set play for School Certificate...Laurie had played Laertes"; later Laurie and Lanyon fence with the foil "used in Hamlet."”
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare: “Laurie writes a school essay on Julius Caesar, and later quotes Antony's line over Caesar's body ("Down Hamlet, up Antony. Over thy wounds now do I prophesy").”
The Country of the Blind by H. G. Wells: “It was more like—have you read a story by Wells called The Country of the Blind?”
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: “I was just carrying out an experiment in sleep-suggestion. They do it in Brave New World, with tiny little radios under the pillows.”
The Oxford Book of French Verse by John Lucas: “"The Oxford Book of French Verse was in her hand, and she was carefully shaking out the pages" — Aunt Olive sorting Laurie's mother's books.”
Books that mention The Charioteer (1)
Among Others by Jo Walton: “On the shelves here there’s The Bull From the Sea and another Mary Renault... The Charioteer.”