Style and Stamina

ARAM BAKSHIAN JR.

Perhaps the most surprising praise for Peter Quennell’s new autobiography was voiced by a septuagenarian Anglo-Italian aesthete over tea at the London Ritz. “Really very good, Peter’s Marble Foot,” the old gentleman conceded before turning the conversation back to Edwardian scandals in Tuscany and the peccadillos of long-forgotten Neapolitan princes and princesses. Considering that the aesthete in question and Peter Quennell have not been on speaking terms for about fifty years now—because of a feud that began with, of all things, a disagreement over that pathetic minor literary curiosity, William Beckford—this was a serious compliment indeed.

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ARAM BAKSHIAN JR.

Perhaps the most surprising praise for Peter Quennell’s new autobiography was voiced by a septuagenarian Anglo-Italian aesthete over tea at the London Ritz. “Really very good, Peter’s Marble Foot,” the old gentleman conceded before turning the conversation back to Edwardian scandals in Tuscany and the peccadillos of long-forgotten Neapolitan princes and princesses. Considering that the aesthete in question and Peter Quennell have not been on speaking terms for about fifty years now—because of a feud that began with, of all things, a disagreement over that pathetic minor literary curiosity, William Beckford—this was a serious compliment indeed.