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COPYRIGHT 2002 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
QUENTIN AND PHILIP by Andrew Barrow Macmillan, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 559, ISBN 0333780515
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...
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