Featured Author: Adrian Stead

Book: The Lost Sketchbook

Genre: Historical Mystery · LGBTQ+

Location: Western Australia

About the Author

At the age of 71, Adrian Stead decided it was finally time to write his novel—well, the first one, anyway. After decades of left-brain work producing business and financial material, he dusted off the creative right hemisphere and began shaping what would become The Lost Sketchbook.

Adrian has spent much of his life in finance and business management across England and Australia, while also earning degrees in English Language and English Literature, later teaching at senior level. Now based in Western Australia, he shares life with his artistic wife, Brenda, and their two cats, Pinot and Merlot.

A lifelong and eclectic reader, Adrian’s literary tastes range from Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens to J.R.R. Tolkien and Agatha Christie. Alongside his own writing, he takes particular pleasure in supporting and encouraging aspiring writers whenever he can.

The Writing Journey

The seed for The Lost Sketchbook was planted by a historical “what if.” Adrian came across an article noting that artist J.M.W. Turner visited Venice in 1819 while Lord Byron was living there, yet no record existed of them meeting. That absence sparked a chain of questions: what if they had met? What if Turner had sketched Byron in compromising poses? And what if those drawings were hidden, stolen, and rediscovered generations later?

Adrian paired this imagined history with a deeply researched examination of life for homosexual men in London before the Wolfenden Report, when homosexuality was still a criminal offence. Setting the modern thread of the novel in 1961—nearly a century after Oscar Wilde’s conviction under the same laws—allowed him to explore sexism, persecution, and moral panic with both historical accuracy and emotional weight.

Extensive research underpins the novel, supported by a free supplementary ebook, Real Locations, available on Adrian’s website, which allows readers to explore the real places featured in the story.

Book Blurb

While in Venice in 1819, artist J.M.W. Turner creates a sketchbook containing highly controversial drawings of his host, Lord Byron, only for it to be taken from him and lost.

The book resurfaces in 1961 London, discovered by Robert Ferngrove, a dealer in fine books on Cecil Court. He has no intention of selling it. When Italian Andrea Rossi learns of the sketchbook’s existence and believes he has a familial claim to it, his search brings the two men into collision.

The Lost Sketchbook transports readers to a shadowed London where quiet, discerning men are criminalised for loving one another, and where blackmail, fear, and desire carry devastating consequences. Each man is prepared to do whatever it takes to claim the book, at any cost.

An Excerpt

Adrian’s novel does not shy away from the realities faced by men forced into secrecy, depicting hidden meeting places, fear of arrest, and the devastating personal cost of living under laws that criminalised identity itself. These scenes serve not for shock, but as witness to lives lived cautiously, bravely, and often painfully in the margins.

Where to Find the Book

The Lost Sketchbook is currently available directly through Adrian’s website, where readers can also access a related free gift and a preview of the prologue.

Website: adrianstead.com

Sneak peek: adrianstead.com/sneak-peek

Facebook: facebook.com/adrian.stead.58

Hidden Voices is proud to feature authors like Adrian Stead—writers who engage history with care, curiosity, and compassion, and who give voice to stories too long kept in the shadows.