Roger Senhouse

Roger Henry Pocklington Senhouse (1899–1970) was a close friend of Michael Llewelyn Davies at both Eton College and Oxford University. He later became friends with Nico Llewelyn Davies. He went on to become partner in an important publishing firm.

Senhouse was gay, which was something of an open secret among those who knew him. Late in life, Nico described Roger Senhouse as "entirely homosexual". Robert Boothby, who had attended Eton and Oxford with Roger and Michael, said in a 1976 interview that the relationship between the two was "fleetingly" homosexual in nature. When Barrie invited Michael to bring some friends for a vacation with him on Eilean Shona in 1920, Roger was one of those he brought.

The private letters of openly gay writer Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) reveal that Roger Senhouse was his last lover, with whom he had a very secretly sado-masochistic relationship in the early 1930s. Strachey wrote to Senhouse following a mock crucifixion, commenting that "the cut has quite healed up and only hurts when touched, and some faint numbnesses occasionally flit through my hands".

In 1935, Roger Senhouse became co-owner with Fredric Warburg of the publishing house Secker & Warburg, which they rescued from receivership. The company – which was both anti-fascist and anti-Soviet – would publish George Orwell's classics Animal Farm and 1984. He translated numerous works by lesbian French novelist Colette, which were then published by his firm. Other writers they published included Simone de Beauvoir, Alberto Moravia, Günter Grass, Angus Wilson, and Melvyn Bragg.