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Quentin and Philip
Book by ANDREW BARROW
572 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 26, 2025
I award this book 5 stars as it is undeniably a wonderful, enchanting and moving portrait of two of England's greatest 20th century eccentrics...
However the writer who himself features in these biographies comes across as a terrible snob.
I have the impression that if he'd encountered either man 10-20 years earlier when they weren't quite so well-established or well known, he would've stepped over them in the street.
I believe this is what the title "How To Become A Virgin" (The sequel to 'The Naked Civil Servant') means: redemption by TV. It's meant to be a jokey, bemused phrase, but I think there's quite a lot of anger in it too.
Although I think to an extent Mr.Crisp was a London snob (later on he became a New York snob) after all, one of his most famous boasts was that he spent his life living in a bedsit. But what if that bedsit had been located in Doncaster or Prestatyn and not one of the richest boroughs of England? Would he have flaunted it then?
But, despite the shortcomings this is one of my favourite books. Especially all the details of Mr. Crisp's fascinating life and la vie de boheme, long gone now and what I consider to be his imperial phase say: 1930-1980, before he moved to New York and became a Resident Tedium.
However the writer who himself features in these biographies comes across as a terrible snob.
I have the impression that if he'd encountered either man 10-20 years earlier when they weren't quite so well-established or well known, he would've stepped over them in the street.
I believe this is what the title "How To Become A Virgin" (The sequel to 'The Naked Civil Servant') means: redemption by TV. It's meant to be a jokey, bemused phrase, but I think there's quite a lot of anger in it too.
Although I think to an extent Mr.Crisp was a London snob (later on he became a New York snob) after all, one of his most famous boasts was that he spent his life living in a bedsit. But what if that bedsit had been located in Doncaster or Prestatyn and not one of the richest boroughs of England? Would he have flaunted it then?
But, despite the shortcomings this is one of my favourite books. Especially all the details of Mr. Crisp's fascinating life and la vie de boheme, long gone now and what I consider to be his imperial phase say: 1930-1980, before he moved to New York and became a Resident Tedium.
June 5, 2021
This is a very interesting portrait of London’s bohemia. Not so much the heavy drinking milieu around Bacon and the Colony Rooms but the cafe culture of especially the thirties and forties. This is done via the biographies of two ‘eccentrics’; Quentin Crisp and Philip O’Connor. Crisp was influential on me as a youth (my cleaning habits are still a despair to my long suffering wife) and is surely quite well known, but O’Connor was (at least to me) entirely unknown until this book. Barrow knew both of them for many years.
Crisp comes over as lovely (no surprise there) but Barrow peels away the cultivated facade to reveal just how much of it was a construct which ultimately Crisp seemed unable to escape in that his conversations became ‘routines’ which made him almost inaccessible to his (many) friends as they could never get to the ‘real’ him.
O’Connor come across at first as an utter horror - an irresponsible drunkard continually on the scrounge until he found someone rich enough to milk. He strike me as one of those ‘rogues’ the rich and arty love because he is so ‘of the now, darling’. And yet he also must have had that immense charm some people have to (often) get away with it (his friends stood by and supported him for years) and I found that when we arrived at the point in his biography where the author gets to know him I somehow found myself becoming more ‘accommodating’ to his obvious mental health issues ecsacerpated by his years of boozing. Not that I personally would ever want anything to do with him as he would scare the hell out me me.
Incredibly it appears it was O’Connor who ‘launched’ Crisp into the media, firstly via a radio interview with him and then by having him make his acting debut in a 1967 adaptation of one of his poems ‘Captain Busby’. The link is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f_5s... . O’Connors poetry is surrealist and usually written in a single un-revised or edited draft- two more reasons why I wouldn’t like O’Connor.
But I did like this book a lot. Barrow writes entertainingly, digs out lots of interesting facts and images ie Crisp dangling his great great nephew on his knee. He is especially good over Crisps salad days when to appear on the streets of 1930’s Britain must have been mind-bogglingly brave/foolhardy (delete as you see fit) and O’Connor’s years in France where he cooked/drank and fought with seemingly everybody who visited. He also teases out lots of strange links and co-incidences between his subjects lives and his own which lift the book out of the drier realms of biography and makes it more personal and doesn’t shy away from sharing his personal opinions, both good and ill, about them.
I’ve minor quibbles over names and name dropping, for example I’m not sure if he is being ironic/dismissive/snobbish when he refers to O’Connor's long term partner (the almost saint-like millionairess Panna Grady) part funding ‘Fuck You’ magazine by a ‘certain Ed Sanders’- surely he knows who he is. He also seems to get to a lot of posh parties. But this is still a great book and one of those volumes which link people and places in interesting ways for the lover of minutiae. Recommended!
Crisp comes over as lovely (no surprise there) but Barrow peels away the cultivated facade to reveal just how much of it was a construct which ultimately Crisp seemed unable to escape in that his conversations became ‘routines’ which made him almost inaccessible to his (many) friends as they could never get to the ‘real’ him.
O’Connor come across at first as an utter horror - an irresponsible drunkard continually on the scrounge until he found someone rich enough to milk. He strike me as one of those ‘rogues’ the rich and arty love because he is so ‘of the now, darling’. And yet he also must have had that immense charm some people have to (often) get away with it (his friends stood by and supported him for years) and I found that when we arrived at the point in his biography where the author gets to know him I somehow found myself becoming more ‘accommodating’ to his obvious mental health issues ecsacerpated by his years of boozing. Not that I personally would ever want anything to do with him as he would scare the hell out me me.
Incredibly it appears it was O’Connor who ‘launched’ Crisp into the media, firstly via a radio interview with him and then by having him make his acting debut in a 1967 adaptation of one of his poems ‘Captain Busby’. The link is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f_5s... . O’Connors poetry is surrealist and usually written in a single un-revised or edited draft- two more reasons why I wouldn’t like O’Connor.
But I did like this book a lot. Barrow writes entertainingly, digs out lots of interesting facts and images ie Crisp dangling his great great nephew on his knee. He is especially good over Crisps salad days when to appear on the streets of 1930’s Britain must have been mind-bogglingly brave/foolhardy (delete as you see fit) and O’Connor’s years in France where he cooked/drank and fought with seemingly everybody who visited. He also teases out lots of strange links and co-incidences between his subjects lives and his own which lift the book out of the drier realms of biography and makes it more personal and doesn’t shy away from sharing his personal opinions, both good and ill, about them.
I’ve minor quibbles over names and name dropping, for example I’m not sure if he is being ironic/dismissive/snobbish when he refers to O’Connor's long term partner (the almost saint-like millionairess Panna Grady) part funding ‘Fuck You’ magazine by a ‘certain Ed Sanders’- surely he knows who he is. He also seems to get to a lot of posh parties. But this is still a great book and one of those volumes which link people and places in interesting ways for the lover of minutiae. Recommended!
September 10, 2019
I mainly read this for the Quentin Crisp parts, though the contrapuntal life of Philip O'Connor draws out the bohemian milieu of 30s and 40s London marvellously. This is extremely well researched, with Barrow visiting many of the places related to their lives and knowing them personally (at some distance). This is a great testament to their lives, though at times a little cliquey and self indulgent in name dropping.
to-buy
March 16, 2017Mentioned in Quentin crisp a profession of being by Nigel Kelly
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews