In May 1962 the London-based literary agent John Johnson received news that Michael Dillon, one of his clients, had died unexpectedly in a hospital in India. Dillon had been brought to a hospital in Dalhousie, in the north of India, after collapsing on a mountain pass while travelling to Kashmir. Shortly after receiving news of this clientâs untimely passing, Johnson was surprised to receive a parcel Dillon had sent to London days before his death.
The parcel contained Dillonâs memoir. Out of the Ordinary, as the manuscript was titled, remains a remarkable document. It records the life of an Anglo-Irish transgender man whose journey took him from an aristocratic upbringing, through education at Oxford and Trinity College Dublin and, finally, to India, where he was ordained a Buddhist monk. The act of writing it with the intent of publication was, as Dillonâs first biographer, Liz Hodgkinson, noted, âa kind of victoryâ for Dillon. When Dillon posted the m