He remained in London during the 1941 Blitz, stocked up on cosmetics, purchased five pounds of henna and paraded through the streets during the black-out, picking up G.I.s, whose kindness and open-mindedness inspired his love of all things American.
For six months, he worked as a prostitute in a 1998 interview, he said he was looking for love, but found only degradation, a reflection he'd previously expressed in the 1968 World in Action interview, which aired on television in 1971.Ĭrisp left home to move to the centre of London at the end of 1930, and after dwelling in a succession of flats, found a bed-sitting room in Denbigh Street, Pimlico, where he "held court with London's brightest and roughest characters." His 'outlandish' appearance – he wore bright make-up, dyed his long hair crimson, painted his fingernails and wore sandals to display his painted toe-nails – brought admiration and curiosity from some quarters, but generally attracted hostility and violence from strangers passing him in the streets.Ĭrisp attempted to join the British army at the outbreak of the Second World War, but was rejected and declared exempt by the medical board on the grounds that he was "suffering from sexual perversion". After leaving school in 1926, Crisp studied journalism at King's College London, but failed to graduate in 1928, going on to take art classes at the Regent Street Polytechnic.Īround this time, Crisp began visiting the cafés of Soho – his favourite being The Black Cat in Old Compton Street – meeting other young gay men and rent-boys, and experimenting with make-up and women's clothes. īy his own account, Crisp was "effeminate" from an early age, resulting in his being teased while at Kingswood House School in Epsom, Surrey, from which he won a scholarship to Denstone College, Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, in 1922. He changed his name to Quentin Crisp in his twenties after leaving home, and expressed a feminine appearance to a degree that shocked contemporary Londoners and provoked gay-bashing assaults. ĭenis Charles Pratt was born in Sutton, Surrey, on 25 December 1908, the fourth child of solicitor Spencer Charles Pratt (1871–1931) and former governess Frances Marion Pratt (née Phillips 1873–1960). After identifying as a gay man for most of his life, just before his death, Crisp wrote that he was transgender. Crisp defied convention by criticising both gay liberation and Diana, Princess of Wales. His one-man stage show was a long-running hit both in Britain and America, and he also appeared in films and on television. The interviews he gave about his unusual life attracted great curiosity, and he was soon sought after for his personal views on social manners and the cultivation of style.
He then spent thirty years as a professional model for life-classes in art colleges. During his teen years he worked briefly as a rent boy.
Quentin Crisp (born Denis Charles Pratt ( )25 December 1908 – ( )21 November 1999) was an English writer, humorist and actor. Writer, illustrator, actor, artist's model