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George Norman Douglas
(December 8, 1868 - February 7, 1952) U.K.

George Douglas

Diplomat and travel writer

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Douglas was born at Türingen in the Vorarlberg in Austria, of mixed Scottish and German aristocratic lineage, and educated in England and at the Gymnasium in Karlsruhe. After a brief stint in the British diplomatic service, he bought a villa at Gayola on the Bay of Naples and later moved to Capri.

In 1898 he married a cousin, Elsa Fitzgibbon, by whom he had two sons before he divorced her on the grounds of her infidelity in 1903. However, in 1897 he had become erotically involved with Michele, the 15-year-old brother of a temporary mistress, and after his divorce, his principal erotic and emotional interests were pederastic. From Capri period onwards, there are records of a succession of boyfriends, named and nameless, some short-term, others who remained friends for life.

Douglas became financially impoverished after 1907 and lived in poverty for about two decades with his later companion Giuseppe Orioli in Paris, St Malo, Menton, Florence, Lisbon, and London, before returning to Capri in 1946. In 1916 he chose flight from England to Italy, skipping bail after he was charged with sexual assault of a 16-year-old boy.

Further scandals led to Douglas leaving Italy for the south of France in 1937. During World War II Douglas left France, and on a circuitous journey to London, where he lived from 1942 to 1946, he published the first edition of his 'Almanac' in a tiny edition in Lisbon. He returned to Capri, where his circle of acquaintances included the writer Graham Greene and the food writer Elizabeth David. He died in Capri, apparently deliberately overdosing himself on drugs after a long illness.

Douglas is chiefly remembered for his travel books about Tunisia, Calabria and Capri, published as Fountains in the Sand (1912), Siren Land (1911) and Old Calabria (1915) dealing with Italy; his novel South Wind (1917) which celebrates the pleasures of the hedonistic life on his adopted island of Capri.

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Source: excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, from Antiquity to WWII, Routledge, London, 2001 - et alii

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