Days of Youth

The astonishingly frank diary of a gay man that spans the Edwardian era to the 1930s.

A renowned wealthy philanthropist, and owner of Caldicot Castle in Wales, Geoffry Wheatly Cobb (1858-1931) saved and restored three of England's historic naval warships, turning them into training vessels. Over several decades he sponsored traineeships for hundreds of working class youths, in order to give them a better start in life, and provide what he believed was the time of their lives.

Besides historic ships, young men and youths were Geoffry's other passion; one he detailed with remarkable candor in his private diaries. Due to extraordinary circumstances a few of the volumes miraculously escaped destruction.

An exceedingly rare survival, they represent a previously hidden history, and lasting record of those vanished days - days filled, as Cobb wrote, with glorious faces and figures, and joyous life.

OVER 50 PAGES OF PHOTOGRAPHS

Personalities who feature in the diaries include Cobb's friend, the celebrated painter Henry Scott Tuke, and even the future Duke of Windsor. In their pages, Cobb writes his daily life aboard ship and at Caldicot, as wells as detailing an endless string of lovers. He also pens eloquent defences of homosexual desire.

As well as eye-opening and unintentionally comic passages, the diaries include statements that are laugh-out-loud or gasp-worthy, as well as beguiling glimpses of the spacious days of a privileged yesteryear.

As the book's Introduction states: "It is an intimate view of an extraordinary life: that of a man whose fortune enabled him to be master and commander of an alternative realm; one in which his forbidden sexuality could be freely and fully indulged. However, it is also a window into a remarkable maritime enterprise from a vanished past."

The editor, Peter Jordaan, is the author of the highly-praised historical biographical trilogy A Secret Between Gentlemen.

This edition is the first ever, and includes an introduction, epilogue, appendix, and footnotes, plus over 50 pages of photographs from Cobb's private albums, the majority never-before published. Note: In the hardback and Kindle edition these images are reproduced as duotones, plus, there are some Tuke portraits in full colour. For the sake of affordability, in this paperback edition all images are monochrome.