'Gay affair' inspired Enoch poetry.

Poetry written by former Wolverhampton MP Mr Enoch Powell when he was a Cambridge student was inspired by a homosexual friendship, it was claimed yesterday.

Canon Eric James said Mr Powell, who died on Sunday, confided in him ten years ago about the relationship and he had sworn to keep it secret until Mr Powell died.

Canon James, who was a chaplain at Trinity College, Cambridge after Mr Powell was there, said the former Wolverhampton South West MP gave him a copy of his First Poems, and drew his attention to some verses in which he "tried to put into words what a homosexual relationship had meant to him".

The poems had previously been assumed to refer to Mr Powell's feelings for Albrighton hunt social committee member Barbara Kennedy who he took to a music hall for his first date in 1948, when he was in his thirties.

She later became engaged to a Shropshire businessman and Canon James yesterday said the verses referred to a much earlier episode.

He said Mr Powell did not identify the man but said the relationship was "the most painful thing in my early life".

Canon James added: "I promised Enoch Powell I would not disclose what he had said to me about the homosexual basis of certain of his poems until after his death.

"Then it would be a matter of literary history."

Mr Powell married his political secretary Pamela Wilson in 1952 and they remained happily married until he died, aged 85.