Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay - Softcover

Diamond, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1991016182 ISBN 13: 9781991016188

Publisher: Massey University Press, 2022

Synopsis

In 1920 New Zealanders were shocked by the news that the brilliant, well-connected mayor of Whanganui had shot a young gay poet, D'Arcy Cresswell, who was blackmailing him. They were then riveted by the trial that followed.

Mackay was sentenced to hard labour and later left the country, only to be shot by a police sniper during street unrest in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis.

Mackay had married into Whanganui high society, and the story has long been the town’s dark secret. The outcome of years of digging by historian Paul Diamond, Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay shines a clear light on the vengeful impulses behind the blackmail and Mackay’s ruination.

The cast of this tale includes the Prince of Wales, the president of the RSA, Sir Robert Stout, Blanche Baughan . . . even Lady Ottoline Morrell. But it is much more than an extraordinary story of scandal. At its heart, the Mackay affair reveals the perilous existence of homosexual men at that time and how society conspired to control and punish them.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Diamond (Ngati Haua, Te Rarawa, Ngapuhi) is Curator, Maori at the Alexander Turnbull Library. He is the author of A Fire in Your Belly: Maori leaders speak (Huia, 2003), Makereti: Taking Maori to the world (Random House, 2007) and Savaged to Suit: Maori and cartooning in New Zealand (Fraser Books, 2018). He has previously worked as an oral historian and broadcaster, and in 2017 he was awarded Creative New Zealand’s Berlin Writer’s Residency.

Edition details

• Publisher: Massey University Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1991016182
• ISBN 13: 9781991016188
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 328