SOME BOYS
by Michael Davidson

In 1969, 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.

Davidson was originally commissioned to write this book by the Oliver Layton Press in New York, who asked for a book that “emphasized the sexual side of boy-love”. When they inexplicably delayed publication, he sold the British rights to a nervous new publisher who annoyed him greatly by insisting on cutting a few slightly racy passages. The next British edition followed the first.  The unexpurgated Oliver Layton edition that came out after the first British one was extremely rare, fetching huge prices on the second-hand market. This is the first British edition to restore the cut passages.

Despite Oliver Layton’s request, even this unexpurgated edition is hardly sexually explicit. It is in any case beautifully-written and evocative travel writing as much as it is about Davidson’s boy-loves.

The paperback version of Some Boys can be bought from amazon.co.uk for £9.99, from amazon.com for $12.49, and from every other Amazon branch for a roughly equivalent sum.

A Kindle version can likewise be bought from amazon.co.uk for £5.99, from amazon.com for $7.49, and from every other Amazon branch for a roughly equivalent sum.