A comical and poignant memoir of a gay man living life as he pleased in the 1930sIn 1931, gay liberation was not a movement—it was simply unthinkable. But in that year, Quentin Crisp made the courageous decision to "come out" as a homosexual. This exhibitionist with the henna-dyed hair was harrassed, ridiculed and beaten. Nevertheless, he claimed his right to be himself—whatever the consequences. The Naked Civil Servant is both a comic masterpiece and a un...

A comical and poignant memoir of a gay man living life as he pleased in the 1930sIn 1931, gay liberation was not a movement—it was simply unthinkable. But in that year, Quentin Crisp made the courageous decision to "come out" as a homosexual. This exhibitionist with the henna-dyed hair was harrassed, ridiculed and beaten. Nevertheless, he claimed his right to be himself—whatever the consequences. The Naked Civil Servant is both a comic masterpiece and a un...

From the delightfully idiosyncratic imagination of Quentin S. Crisp comes an exquisite post-pastoral novella about an encounter with mystery. The Hermitage is the story of a secret half-revealed, an epiphany half-realized. Join the narrator as he pursues a chimera from the green heart of England to the grey modernity of urban sprawl.A young man's solitary pilgrimage to a tiny West Country church, a journey ostensibly inspired by the literary figure Sabine Baring-Gould, ecc...