Stephen Tennant Catalogue

Lascar – The Art & Ephemera of Stephen Tennant – The Man Who Stayed in Bed

Exhibition Catalogue – for dispatch from 10th november 2026 – Special Pre Publication price

Stephen Tennant (1906–1987) was the most dazzling of the Bright Young Things. An aesthete, poet and artist, he was the lover of Siegfried Sassoon and, it’s said, an inspiration for Sebastian Flyte. For much of his later life he retreated to bed at Wilsford Manor in Wiltshire, where he spent decades on Lascar, his never-finished novel of sailors, Marseille and the Mediterranean. He filled notebooks, scrapbooks, letters and poems with drawings of sailors and roses, orchids and seashores, a whole private world in ink and gold.

This winter The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & UnNatural History brings that world back to life. The exhibition runs from November 2026 to March 2027 and gathers paintings, drawings and manuscripts with the debris of an extraordinary life. These include his hand-painted Favourite Fairy Tales notebook, illustrated pages from Lascar, letters to friends, unpaid bills from Claridge’s and the Hyde Park Hotel, and the blue velvet tail coat, breeches and hat made for him by Lesley & Roberts in 1925.

The accompanying catalogue is published in an edition of only 300 copies. It runs to 90 A4 pages, is perfect bound and is lavishly illustrated throughout. It has essays by Philip Hoare, Max Egremont, Hugo Vickers and Viktor Wynd, and a piece by John Waters. It’s an essential record of one of the twentieth century’s great eccentrics, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.   Please note all works are for sale