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• The disrobing : sex and satire
  Poet and author Royal Murdoch, known to friends as Kenneth, was born in California in 1898 and moved to Mexico City in the mid-1960s, where he died in 1981. ‘The Disrobing’, ten copies of which were seized in the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids, is a posthumously published collection spanning fifty years, including poetry, diary extracts, letters and part of an unfinished novel. It was edited by Gay Sunshine’s Winston Leyland. Murdoch himself wrote of ‘Gay Sunshine Journal’ that “I was already an old man when I first saw an issue” and “each issue brings me a renewed sense of liberation”. Murdoch’s prose works in particular describe life in pre-Stonewall America. His papers are now held by the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.