Some Boys

by Michael Davidson

Some Boys is the 1969 sequel to Michael Davidson's The World, the Flesh and Myself which was previously published in 1962. The earlier work was described by Arthur Koestler as 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" and it scandalized the "respectable" world with its opening sentence: "This is the life history of a lover of boys".

Davidson's sequel is still more revealing. Some Boys is a fond memoir of the author's young friends across four decades and as many continents: from Marrakech to Saigon, Ischia to Lahore. Written with the discernment and observation of a brilliant journalist, these recollections combine erotic intenseness with an unerring personal empathy, and show throughout a keen and sensitive perception for the diversity of international customs and culture in the middle twentieth century -- much of which is now gone forever.

Genres: LGBT, Memoir

201 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Born into an upper-middle-class family in Guernsey and educated at Lancing, Davidson joined the army in 1914. Being wounded in 1916, he became a newspaper reporter and a supporter of the Communist Party. He translated a number of anti-Nazi books. After having lived in Berlin in early to mid 1930s, he wrote newspaper articles to warn England against the full implications of Hitler's ideology, which he had seen up-close, but editors showed little interest. After being harassed by the SA for being British, a communist, and presumably a homosexual, Davidson fled Germany. He spent the rest of his life serving as a foreign correspondent for, among other newspapers, The Observer, The News Chronicle and The New York Times.

At age 26, Davidson met W. H. Auden, then 16, and they began a "poetic relationship". Davidson mentored Auden and was the first to publish him.

Davidson's 1962 autobiography "The World, the Flesh and Myself" begins: "This is the life-history of a lover of boys." In the book, he recalls not only his reporting from various war zones, but also his encounters with adolescent boys in those areas. This aspect was the sole focus of his follow-up memoir "Some Boys" (1969).

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book years ago and instead of writing a review for it I refer you to my review for Davidson's other book of memoirs 'The World, the Flesh and Myself' at: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... What I say there could largely be said about this book.

[E. Trist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each chapter recounts an English journalist's liaison with an adolescent boy in a different Old World city over a thirty-year period from 1929 to 1959. The blurb here might lead one to suppose there are sexual descriptions, but there are not. Rather it is beautifully-written travel writing about a lost age. The new Arcadian Dreams edition restores some passages cut from the previous British editions.