Category Archives: Belle Époque

Secret Satan, 2022
You know what to expect by now, surely? Well, expect even more of it: this is our biggest year-end book selection yet.

22 books for 2022
We’ve got bad gays, can-can dancers and pataphysicians, we’ve got a Black Pope, an Expressionist Joan of Arc and the Last Emperor of Mexico. Won’t you join us?

22 books for 2022
We’ve got bad gays, can-can dancers and pataphysicians, we’ve got a Black Pope, an Expressionist Joan of Arc and the Last Emperor of Mexico. Won’t you join us?

Merely real
Count Robert de Montesquiou, poet, dandy, aesthete, on the 100th anniversary of his death

Merely real
Count Robert de Montesquiou, poet, dandy, aesthete, on the 100th anniversary of his death

Secret Satan, 2021 part 1
From Romanian avant-garde Elvis to all the Swedish anarchist Sufi Post-Impressionsists you can imagine

Secret Satan, 2021 part 1
From Romanian avant-garde Elvis to all the Swedish anarchist Sufi Post-Impressionsists you can imagine

21 books for 2021
A selection of works with which to while away your second or third lockdown.

Secret Satan, 2020
Books to remember from a year you probably want to forget

20 books for 2020
In which we visit Rogomelec and Sealand, the castle of truth and a fern-loved gully

20 books for 2020
In which we visit Rogomelec and Sealand, the castle of truth and a fern-loved gully

Secret Satan, 2019 translation edition
“We are both monarch and victim in a gothic simulation illuminated by sombre flashes of sardonic rhetoric.” Which is nice.

Secret Satan, 2019 translation edition
“We are both monarch and victim in a gothic simulation illuminated by sombre flashes of sardonic rhetoric.” Which is nice.

Secret Satan, 2019
From clean-lined architects to Dirty Helen Cromwell the potty-mouthed barkeep – let us join hands and make contact with the fabulous.

Secret Satan, 2019
From clean-lined architects to Dirty Helen Cromwell the potty-mouthed barkeep – let us join hands and make contact with the fabulous.

19 books for 2019
Who needs this many books? You do. YOU need this many books.

Secret Satan, 2018
Your essential Christmas book list – it’s naughty, it’s nice. Mostly naughty if we’re honest.

Secret Satan, 2018
Your essential Christmas book list – it’s naughty, it’s nice. Mostly naughty if we’re honest.

Colette on screen
… along with Mathilde de Morny and Rachilde *squee*

Death of a magus
The demise of Joséphin Péladan, the man behind the modern Rosicrucian revival, 100 years ago today

Death of a magus
The demise of Joséphin Péladan, the man behind the modern Rosicrucian revival, 100 years ago today

La vie en Palais Rose
The collection of Boni de Castellane and Anna Gould

17-plus books for 2017
Dead poets, nude dancers, good bohemians, mystical Symbolists, jaded aristocrats, queer courtiers and blind men at play in a realm of dreams and voodoo

17-plus books for 2017
Dead poets, nude dancers, good bohemians, mystical Symbolists, jaded aristocrats, queer courtiers and blind men at play in a realm of dreams and voodoo

Late entries
A few book titles from late 2016 you may have missed…

A dandy in aspic
Monsieur de Bougrelon covers the waterfront in Jean Lorrain’s singular, intoxicating novella

A dandy in aspic
Monsieur de Bougrelon covers the waterfront in Jean Lorrain’s singular, intoxicating novella

Royally buzzed
“Even the mummies stand up and walk when they drink Vin Mariani!”

14 books for 2014
Books, books, books – dirty and otherwise