Rivers, who figure prominently in Pat Barkers previous novel of the first world war, Regeneration.

Greater fictional scope also permits a deeper treatment of the psychological, political and professional life of the central character, Billy Prior. This novel continues the stories of Billy Prior and W. A major theme of the book, Prior's intense and indiscriminate bisexuality, is effectively contrasted with Rivers's tepid asexuality and Sassoon's pure homosexuality.

This grants Barker more freedom to explore her characters and their actions, the descriptions of which might be considered libellous if attributed to real people. Whereas Regeneration is an anomalous, but not unique, mixture of fact and fiction, The Eye in the Door acknowledges real events, including the campaign against homosexuals being waged that year by right-wing MP Noel Pemberton Billing, and the conviction of activist Alice Wheeldon for attempted assassination of Prime Minister David Lloyd George, here subsumed with the character named Beatrice Roper, but the whole remains consistently within the realm of fiction. Known collectively as 'The Regeneration Trilogy', each of the novels takes place during World War One and features the same central characters at their core, some entirely fictional, others embellished historical figures. The third part of the trilogy, The Ghost Road, continues the story. The Eye in the Door is the second in a series of three anti-war novels written by acclaimed British author Pat Barker. It ends some time before the conclusion of the First World War later the same year. The Eye in the Door is set in London, beginning in mid-April 1918, and continues the interwoven stories of Dr William Rivers, Billy Prior, and Siegfried Sassoon begun in Regeneration. The Eye in the Door is a novel by Pat Barker, first published in 1993, and forming the second part of the Regeneration trilogy.

Pat barker the eye in the door