Do please join us in celebrating A new reissue by Harper Collins of Philip Hoare’s singular biography of Stephen Tennant on Thursday 12th Nov 2026 6-8pm at the Viktor Wynd Museum, 11 Mare Street, London
& The Opening reception for ‘Lascar – the art & ephemera of Stephen Teannant – The Man Who stayed in Bed’
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‘Witty and amazing … both scholarly and hilarious at the same time’ John Waters, New York Times
Stephen Tennant was barely a being of his time. A fixture of high society during the 1920s, he was once driven around London in wearing a striped football jersey, a pair of earrings, and gold dust in his hair. He was a performative, transformative figure – an alien icon, like Dorian Gray, Ziggy Stardust, or a Warholian superstar.
Republished for the first time since it became an international bestseller in 1990, Serious Pleasures goes in search of this enigmatic aesthete. Muse to Cecil Beaton, lover of Siegfried Sassoon, confidante of E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, Tennant would became a kind of queer oracle, reclining in his manor in deepest Wiltshire with parrots and lizards for company, receiving visitors such as Truman Capote, Greta Garbo, David Hockney and Derek Jarman.
Did they find an indulgent, wilful figure, stranded in time? Or an heroic artist, living without regard for societal norms? In Serious Pleasures recreates, with astonishment and affection, this outrageous life lived as a work of art.
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