"In Bunny's Bush", shot by Robert Grant (second from right), 1888.
Books
A man’s man’s world
by Paul Diamond
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Furthermore, Brickell argues that the networks established from the 19th century onwards were the foundation for the political movement that emerged in the 1970s. He continues his case for the continuity of the past in the present in an afterword exploring how the story of the relationship between the 19th-century novelist Samuel Butler and Charles Paine Pauli has been absorbed and retold by generations of New Zealand men, illustrating how “past and present times exist in active engagement with each other”.
There are some surprising omissions. The Penguin History of New Zealand highlighted the story of Sir Alister McIntosh, the senior public servant whose nomination for Secretary-General of the Commonwealth was withdrawn after the Government was advised his sexuality made him vulnerable to blackmail. Both McIntosh and Sir Hugh Walpole, the expat author and member of 1930s London gay literary society, are absent from an otherwise comprehensive survey. The format of the book (a flimsy endjacket over a hefty paperback) is cumbersome.
But these are minor gripes in what is a readable, gorgeous book that redresses the scant treatment of the subject in histories to date. In allowing the stories of Antipodean lives to be told, Brickell not only illuminates the story of sex and affection between men, but tells us a lot about New Zealand society as a whole.
MATES & LOVERS: A HISTORY OF GAY NEW ZEALAND, by Chris Brickell (Godwit, $49.99), is released on July 4.
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