Richard Temple is a 1962 novel by Patrick O'Brian, told in flashback as Temple, a British agent, lies in a Gestapo cell in occupied France. After prolonged torture, the protagonist examines his past life as a painter in London in the 1930s,^[1] and describes his early erotic encounters.^[2] The novel contains many details of the author's youthful life.^[3]

The joy Temple feels when he realises that the Gestapo have accepted pseudo-Temple as the truth, and that he is therefore safe, is the converse of O’Brian’s agony when journalists, late in his life, broke down his own cover story.

— William Waldegrave

• Richard Temple, London: Macmillan, 1962;
• Richard Temple, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006, ISBN 978-0-393-06187-1