First full-lenght biography of Norman Douglas. Norman Douglas (1867-1952) lived a long, varied and on many occasions scandalous life. The son of a Scottish father and Austrian Mother, with a boyhood spent in the Voralberg district, he was by turns a young scholar of ripening repute, a man about town in London, a young diplomat in Russia. From Russia he had to make a sudden departure because of scandal over a woman. Later he had to leave equally hurriedly - this time because of boys. Much of his life was spent as an involuntary expatriate in his beloved Italy, where a host of friends stood by him. Norman Douglas was author of books like South Wind, Old Calabria, Fountains in the Sand and Siren Land.

In this witty novel of ideas, an intellectual and sensual adventure of the rarest kind unfolds amid a picturesque Mediterranean island. Generations of readers have delighted in the tale of an English clergyman's visit to a "rambling and craggy sort of place," where whitewashed houses perch on sheer rock cliffs above a gleaming sea. But underneath its tranquil surface, the island seethes with volcanic activity. And behind the aristocratic discourse on life and love lies a tangle of nefarious activities, from art forgery to murder. A memorable cast of characters includes the genteel visiting bishop as well as an elderly diplomat, a devilish magistrate, a malevolent barkeeper, and a host of other expatriates, freethinkers, eccentrics, zealots, and ne'er-do-wells. Their interactions generate a volatile mixture of notions that prove as unsettling as the sirocco, the hot, damp wind from the south. Combining elegant prose with glittering epigrams, mordant satire, and memorable characterization, this story offers thought-provoking entertainment.

The sexual exploitation of children by adults has a long, fraught history. Yet how cultures have reacted to it is shaped by a range of forces, beliefs, and norms, like any other social phenomenon. Changes in how Anglo-American culture has understood intergenerational sex can be seen with startling clarity in the life of British writer Norman Douglas (1868–1952), who was a beloved and popular author, a friend of luminaries like Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, and D.H. Lawrence, and an unrepentant and uncloseted pederast. Rachel Hope Cleves’s careful study opens a window onto the social history of intergenerational sex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, revealing how charisma, celebrity, and contemporary standards protected Douglas from punishment—until they didn’t. Unspeakable approaches Douglas as neither monster nor literary hero, but as a man who participated in an exploitative sexual subculture that was tolerated in ways we may find hard to understand. Using letters, diaries, memoirs, police records, novels, and photographs—including sources by the children Douglas encountered—Cleves identifies the cultural practices that structured pedophilic behaviors in England, Italy, and other places Douglas favored. Her book delineates how approaches to adult-child sex have changed over time and offers insight into how society can confront similar scandals today, celebrity and otherwise.