"You are a male personage, I presume", asked the magistrate trying Quentin Crisp for soliciting. Crisp successfully defended himself by arguing that if he had wanted to engage in clandestine sex he would hardly have set out to make himself so conspicuous.
In his clumsy fashion, the magistrate had stumbled on the key to this extraordinary individual. Born Dennis Pratt into an impoverished family in Sutton, he wanted to be something different - and he transformed himself into Quentin Crisp, the flamboyant and witty eccentric who refused to conform to any definition the world tried to pin on him; a man who looked like a woman but wasn't.
This is a celebration of the life and achievements of Quentin Crisp with contributions from friends, admirers and fellow artists. The book's aim is to explore his life from a variety of different angles, offering fresh and sometimes surprising insights into this colourful but enigmatic character. Among other aspects, the book assesses Crisp's skill as a performer and the elaborately constructed persona which made him famous. Affectionate but irreverent, 'The Stately Homo' is a tribute to one of the twentieth century's true English eccentrics.
