Casanova in London

"In the New Statesman, TLS, the Spectator, the New York Times and Harper's Bazaar among others, these short pieces appeared in other forms as book reviews, an introduction, etc. but all of them display Mr. Quennell's immanent virtues -- the well-informed insights so pleasantly styled. There are twenty-five figures, chiefly old with the exception of [Robert] Graves and [Evelyn] Waugh, and from both sides of the Channel. The title essay deals with the indignities Casanova suffered in London in 1763 in the hands and even in the bed of a malicious demi-mondame. There's Victor Hugo and George Sand in the setting sun of old age; [André] Gide, married to a woman who aroused devotion but could not awake desire while [James] Boswell, the dissolute, was anything but faithful; [Daniel] Defoe's transformation of Alexander Selkirk's story; Waugh, the 'greatest novelist' of this generation; that lovable old La Rochefoucauld; and the 'magician of pleasure,' [Guillaume] Apollinaire. One or two unknowns, generally speaking, Anthony Hamilton and [Henry] Mayhew and perhaps the Goncourts whose pursuit of l'art pour l'art is like Quennell's, a rebuke to our own 'slovenly and hall-hearted age.' Even in this minimal form, the essays represent a perfectly proportioned judgment and taste."--Kirkus Reviews.