Downfall - The destruction of Charles Mackay, by Paul Diamond

A New Zealand history told through a queer lens
Shortlisted for the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards

In 1920, New Zealand was gripped by the news that Charles Mackay, Whanganui’s brilliant and well-connected mayor, had shot a young gay poet, D’Arcy Cresswell, who was blackmailing him. The trial that followed captivated the country.

Mackay was sentenced to hard labour and later left New Zealand. His life ended in Berlin, where he was shot by a police sniper during street unrest as the Nazis rose to power.

Mackay had married into Whanganui high society, and the affair was long treated as the town’s dark secret. Drawing on years of research, historian Paul Diamond’s Downfall: The Destruction of Charles Mackay examines the impulses behind the blackmail and the events that led to Mackay’s ruin.

The story’s cast includes the Prince of Wales, the president of the RSA, Sir Robert Stout, Blanche Baughan and Lady Ottoline Morrell. But Downfall is more than an account of an extraordinary scandal. At its heart is the perilous existence of homosexual men in that era, and the ways society sought to control and punish them.

Publisher: Massey University Press
Print publication date: November 2022
Pages: 328
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781991016188