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Interviews [published June 1996]
Quentin Crisp: An Englishman In New York
Chris Mitchell goes for lunch with Quentin Crisp
This month sees the publication of Resident Alien,
the selected diaries of Quentin Crisp. It is difficult to
surmise whether this man needs an introduction or not,
such is his longevity as a cult figure of quintessential
Englishness, “a stately old homo of England”, to quote
one of his most famous phrases. Quentin Crisp is, after
all, the man who first personified the concept of ‘camp’.
“If I have a talent for anything,” he states, “it is not for
doing but for being.” It was not until the 1960s, when
he already over 50 years old, that Quentin first rose to
fame with the TV adaptation of his autobiography, The
Naked Civil Servant. In it, Quentin documented his
early, life-changing decision that “instead of hiding my
sexuality, I would announce it.”
With his henna’d hair, “gravity-defying” makeup and
inch-long fingernails, the young Quentin Crisp cut a
brave and audacious figure in 1930s London. Indeed, it
is hard to imagine the outrage he must have provoked.
As he notes in his book Manners From Heaven:
“During my Edwardian youth and Georgian middleage
the world (I mean Britain) stayed exactly where
it was, aggressively conformist and conservative; I
BUY Quentin Crisp books online from and
stayed exactly where I was, a blithe spirit revelling in
androgynous anarchy, and there was a battle.”
This battle frequently became physical as well as
psychological; Quentin’s accounts of the numerous
attacks he endured on the streets of London lend a
disturbing pathos to The Naked Civil Servant’s blend of
pithy insight, amused self mockery and biting sarcasm.
Indeed, the luminescence of Quentin’s prose soon won
accolades which proclaimed him as a modern day Oscar
Wilde, a comparison he has always refused. “When
I was young, I thought Oscar Wilde was so noble. I
thought he sacrificed everything for love. Then, when I
became older, I realised this was complete nonsense. In
the charnelhouses of London, Wilde only knew most of
his lovers by Braille. It was utterly sordid.”
Tired of England’s pernicious and parochial character,
Quentin moved to New York in the early 1980s.
By this time he was over 70 years old. After running
various skirmishes with the US immigration authorities,
Quentin succeeded in keeping his British passport
and becoming a resident alien. “The English always
say that the Americans are so false. But I don’t spend
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