Mr Nice and Mr Nasty

Quentin Crisp was, among other delightful things, a human paradox. He loathed the Gay Liberation Movement as bitterly as he despised Oscar Wilde, yet he did more than anyone else to change people’s attitudes towards homosexuality. He was unashamedly flamboyant, yet spinsterish and celibate; the sex act, he explained, was like ‘undergoing a colostomy operation without anaesthetic’. He was flippant yet wise. He hated England, but became an English figure of affection.

Born Denis Pratt, he ‘dyed’ his name Quentin in his early twenties. His childhood was spent in ‘middle-class, middling, middle-brow’ suburbia where his unusual appearance prompted his father to expostulate that he looked like a male whore. Andrew Barrow takes us by the hand and guides us through Crisp’s extraordinary life. We are led into the Black Cat CafZ in the 1920s where Quentin recites polished epigrams prepared the night before in his famous, dust-ridden room. We view with concern Quentin’s contortions as an art school model that earned him the reputation as ‘the most energetic model in the Home Counties’.