London, Dec. 23: A murder inquiry has been launched after the great-grandson of the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson was found dead at his home with a knife plunged into his neck.

The naked body of Hallam Augustine Tennyson, 85, was discovered at 11.20 pm on Wednesday at the north London flat he is understood to have shared with his boyfriend, Kevin.

Paramedics were called to the flat in Highgate, but Tennyson was pronounced dead. Scotland Yard said it would not release details of the murder until a post-mortem examination was conducted.

However, police sources said the author, who was openly homosexual, lived a “colourful” life and had “an open relationship, bringing back up to three men a week”.

Despite his sexuality, Tennyson married a German-Jewish refugee, and had two children. They divorced after 20 years. His daughter-in-law Janice said Tennyson was very close to his children and grandchildren. “We were all very close to him, particularly because our children shared his love of drama,” she said.

At 20, he told his parents that he was homosexual and said that they were “shocked and horrified”. Two years later, he married Margo who knew about his sexuality. However, he continued to engage in homosexuality.

Of their divorce, he said: “I needed to express my homosexuality in a more open way. We had an open marriage but I needed more freedom.”

Between 1946 and 1979, he spent three years in Bengal, working on a rural development programme, but returned to join BBC as a journalist.

In 1984, he found his love again. After publishing his biography, The Haunted Mind, Tennyson received a letter from a male fan, 13 years junior.

Tennyson said his great-grandfather, the Victorian poet laureate, would have disapproved of his sexuality. However, rumours that the poet was also in a homosexual relationship have always been rife.