...confines of middle-class New Zealand for love and liberation in nineteen-sixties London and Europe. Revelling in the freedom conferred by anonymity, Rigby becomes an actor, stripper, rent boy, lover, teacher and dedicated traveller through Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, where travellers were uncommon and countries still retained many of the differences that mad...

... death, and grievous bodily and mental harm were burned into the brains of all who had lived through it and Europeans embraced democratic egalitarian social welfare, free thought, humanism and a fairly harmless hedonism. Cinemas were showing nudist movies. Strip and sex shows were opening everywhere. The Windmill Theatre that boasted it had never closed its doors, now al...