Serious Pleasures
This volume is a biography of British writer and aristocrat Stephen Tennant (1906-1987). The flashy and eccentric Tennant cultivated a life of glamor while accomplishing little professionally during his life; but his beauty and wit dominated his circle of productive companions: Truman Capote, Cecil Beaton, E. M. Forster, the Sitwells, and the Bloomsbury group. The author makes use of Tennant's journals and correspondence, and had the cooperation of Tennant's family and friends to tell the story of an interesting but ultimately sad life.