did some newspaper work and travelled. Wearying of that world too and with the death of his brother Penleigh in 1923, Boyd again turned to religion joining an Anglican Franciscan community in Dorset. This too was a phase, however, so he left and continued on as before. For almost twenty years he lived a nomadic life, never staying long in any place and owning few possessions. He survived financially on one hundred pounds a year from his parents, a short stint as acting editor of The British Australasian, and sporadic payments from his writing. Joan Lindsay, author of Picnic at Hanging Rock, remembers her cousin Martin as a gentleman. He was a modest, free-spirited bachelor, adept at finding comfortable lodging. She remembers, "…he had always had a nose for odd and unusual pieces of furniture and queer old paintings picked up for a few pounds. During the war he had embellished his dugout in France with a large statue of his favourite Dancing Faun, dragging it from one filthy hole to another until forced to abandon it forever in the oozing mud". In 1925 Boyd's first novel, Love Gods, was published. He had found his vocation and between 1925 and 1949 he published ten novels, a volume of autobiography and a children's story. While living in England he is recorded as having an affair with a woman. Boyd's sexuality was, and continues to be, the subject of conjecture. Illicit love, and same-sex desire, are prevailing themes in his work. A 1930s novel, The Shepherd of Admetus was rejected by publishers due to its overt homosexual narrative. After his father's death in July 1940, his mother's inheritance was released, which gave Boyd the financial freedom to live life however he chose. The money originally came from Martin's grandmother Emma à Beckett (née Mills) and had been secured with the direct intervention of his male relatives. Boyd delayed a return to Australia in the hope he could return a success. His motivation was not to be a disappointment to his family and he was plagued by doubts about his own achievements. After the success of Lucinda Brayford, he returned to Australia in 1948, intending to remain living in his grandfather à Beckett's home, 'The Grange', near Berwick. After three years he left again for England in 1951, disappointed by his dream of 'The Grange' and the past, ignored by the Australian literary