Overview

MICHAEL DAVIDSON (1897-1975) was an English foreign correspondent who caused a sensation in 1962 when he published an autobiography, The World, The Flesh and Myself, which opened with the sentence "This is the life history of a lover of boys." In an England where homosexuality was still illegal and widely reviled, it was incredibly daring, but his patent honesty won hearts and it was well-received:

• "the twofold story of a courageous and lovable person's struggle to come to terms with his Grecian heresy and of a brilliant journalist's fight against colonial jingoism" – Arthur Koestler (author of Darkness at Noon), The Observer.
• One of the books that were "the only salvation and sense in my life" and "reflected my own emotional turmoil and my own circumstances" – Stephen Fry on himself as a teenager, Moab Is My Washpot.

Davidson followed the success of his first book with this even more revealing sequel, a fond memoir of his adolescent friends in sixteen cities spanning three continents over three decades. Written with the keen observation of a brilliant journalist invariably open to diverse customs and warmly empathetic with the young:

• "We should be grateful that in Mr. Davidson we have a highly intelligent writer with a sensitive awareness of his nature. As to his style, no other contemporary English writer of prose possesses such exact lyricism, wit and learning" — Colin Spencer, The Evening Standard.

For this edition, some explicit passages, cut from both previous British editions but included in the very rare American edition, have been restored, and explanatory background notes have been added by novelist Edmund Marlowe.