Quentin Crisp

:For the writer of supernatural fiction, see Quentin S. Crisp

Early life

Born Denis Charles Pratt in Sutton, Surrey, the fourth child of accountant, Charles Pratt (1871 – 1931) and former governess Frances Phillips Pratt (1873 – 1960), he changed his name to Quentin Crisp in his twenties after leaving home and cultivating his outlandishly effeminate appearance to a standard that shocked Londoners and provoked attacks.

Related Topics:
Sutton - Surrey - 1871 - 1931 - 1873 - 1960

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By his own account he was effeminate from an early age and found himself the object of teasing at Kingswood Preparatory School in Epsom, from where he won a scholarship to Denstone College, near Uttoxeter in 1922. While in the sixth form he served in and eventually commanded a squad in the Officer's Cadet Force. After leaving school in 1926 he studied journalism at King's College in London and failed to graduate in 1928, going on to take art classes at Regent Street Polytechnic.

Related Topics:
Epsom - Uttoxeter - 1922 - 1926 - King's College - London - 1928 - Regent Street Polytechnic

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Around this time he began frequenting 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. For six months he worked as a prostitute, looking for love he said in a 1999 interview, but only found degradation.

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He left home to move to the centre of London at the end of 1930 and after a succession of flats found a bed-sitting room in Denbeigh Street, 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 toenails – brought admiration and curiosity from some quarters but generally attracted hostility and violence from strangers passing him in the streets.

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