Gaitskell had a long-term affair in the 1950s with the socialite Ann Fleming, the wife of James Bond creator Ian Fleming. She wrote to Evelyn Waugh about a dinner party in 1958 in which Gaitskell and friends from Oxford days "held hands and recited verse because in early life they had loved each other in the same set", until the arrival of her husband "silenced the eminent homos" who "did not seem too pleased." Woodrow Wyatt wrote that "there was a scintilla of platonic homosexuality in [Gaitskell's] affection for Tony"