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Last night I dreamt I went to rue Jacob again
Were I to tell you that there exists interview footage of someone, somewhere, discussing Alice B. Toklas in the present tense while also recalling a midnight tête-à-tête with Marcel Proust and a...
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Long dark night of the soul
Giovanni Boldini: La marchesa Luisa Casati con penne di pavone (1914) The Marchesa Casati died in London on this day in 1957. It seemed a tease to mention an anecdote about her, as I did the other day,...
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Mysterious corners of shade
The bust above, by sculptor Auguste Clésinger, stands guard over the French Senate, in the Palais de Luxembourg in Paris. It is one of numerous variations on the figure of Marianne, the...
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Working the room
British poet David Gascoyne was born 100 years ago today. The occasion is marked tonight by an event in his birth town Harrow, and another on Thursday on the Isle of Wight, where Gascoyne died in...
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Late entries
Happy new year! Our annual look at forthcoming books is…forthcoming. Naturally the quixotic nature of publishing schedules is such that you can miss a lot from a January vantage point, and it strikes...
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17-plus books for 2017
In keeping with a theme, this – a look ahead at books of a Strange Flowers flavour coming out this year – was going to be “17 books for 2017”. But so many interesting titles have gathered on the...
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La vie en Palais Rose
Count (later Marquis) Boni de Castellane was born 150 years ago today. Our sesquicentenarian valentine was a fixture of Belle Époque society, noted for his free spending, his meticulous toilette, his...
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Death of a magus
French writer Joséphin Péladan died one hundred years ago today. By that time he had become “an absurd relic of a receding age” as Alex Ross says in his highly recommended New Yorker article, “The...
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Secret Satan, 2018
Somehow it is already the first day of Advent, which means we are drawing ever closer to that most wonderful time of the year, the day that brought the birth of our saviour Quentin Crisp. You are...
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19 books for 2019
Such are the peculiarities of this most seasonal of seasons that our rundown of forthcoming titles comes at an indecently brief interval after our last bookish blow-out; this Janus-faced time of...
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Secret Satan, 2019
The Feast Day of Saint Quentin of Crisp is already behind us, so it’s high time we got naughty, nice and nasty with our annual seasonal book list. I’m not going to lie – this year Satan’s little...
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Secret Satan, 2019 translation edition
We now turn to a highly subjective selection from the phenomenal wealth of books translated into English that appeared throughout 2019, encompassing a narrower thematic range than our original English...
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20 books for 2020
So December was all about gorging, and January is all about going dry or whatever variety of performative asceticism is congesting your social feeds right now. But it seems strangely appropriate. After...
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Amazon in her prime
Growing up in Australia, Halloween was something I only knew about from American movies rather than a matter of lived experience. As an adult I happened to be in New York at the end of October one...
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Secret Satan, 2020
If you’ve been reading for a while now, you’ll know what to expect – each year around this time I select a bunch of books with a Strange Flowers flavour which you might like to share with intimates who...
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21 books for 2021
As our dire global circumstances keep us away from each other and from communal physical experience, books are among the few cultural artefacts we get to explore in a similar timeframe to our fellow...
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Secret Satan, 2021 part 2
In Berlin, the first snow has fallen and the first Advent candle is lit. I better get a move on. We finished part 1 of our book round-up with Decadence, we begin part 2 with the Father of Decadence...
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Merely real
An anecdote dating from the Belle Époque tells us that one night at the theatre, Count Robert de Montesquiou was greatly struck by a young man he saw in the audience. The stranger bore a startling...
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22 books for 2022
I can’t believe it’s already whatever day it is of whatever year this is. It’s high time we took a look at new titles of a Strange Flowers flavour coming up this year. As much as I look forward to...
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Secret Satan, 2022
Here in Berlin the first snows have been and gone, the first Advent candle is lit and the kitchen smells like Plätzchen. Into this wholesome scene strides a familiar hoofed figure, laden with a sack...
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