Crossing the Lines - book launch - The Women’s Book Shop, Ponsonby

Award-winning, Freeman’s Bay-based historian Brent Coutts has written the first-ever history of gay New Zealand soldiers during WWII - published this month. Called Crossing the Lines, it’s a fascinating account, told principally through three men: Harold Robinson (he was a regular at Shanghai Lil’s when it was held in the Birdcage, Freemans Bay), Ralph Dyer and Douglas Morison.

A colourful book; we enjoyed reading about Harold’s friendship and later marriage to lesbian socialite Freda Stark. Likewise found it hilarious that former PM and devout Presbyterian Major John Marshall’s batman during the war was Harold – who was actually a ballerina!