Fifty years after the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 decriminalised homosexual acts, Jonathan Dollimore explores, in, through and beyond the gay sub-cultures of cities like New York, Brighton and Sydney, what the new freedoms meant for him and others in the following decades. He writes honestly and movingly about his teenage attraction to risk and danger; of accidents and escapes; of curiosity as a flight from boredom; of suicidal depression and ecstasy; and, beneath all, of the life of desire haunted and torn by loss.

For more than thirty years Jonathan Dollimore has been one of contemporary culture's most influential critics of politics, literature, and sexuality. Desire: A Memoir, a hybrid of autobiography, meditation and philosophical reflection, explores the existential sources of his writing.