The Naked Civil Servant (book) The Naked Civil Servant (book) The Naked Civil Servant is the 1968 autobiography of British gay icon Quentin Crisp, adapted into a 1975 film of the same name starring John Hurt. The book began as a 1964 radio interview with Crisp conducted by his friend and fellow eccentric Philip O'Connor. A managing director at Jonathan Cape heard the interview and commissioned the publication. Having sold only 3,500 copies when first released, the book became a success when it was republished following the television movie broadcast. The book contains many anecdotes about Crisp's life from childhood to middle age, including troubles
Gay icon of debate among historians. Modern gay icons are predominantly female entertainers who commonly garner a large following within LGBT communities over the course of their careers. The earliest gay icon may have been Saint Sebastian, a Christian saint and martyr, whose combination of strong and shirtless physique, symbolic arrow-pierced flesh and rapturous look of pain have intrigued artists, both gay and straight, for centuries and began the first explicitly gay cult in the nineteenth century. Journalist Richard A. Kaye wrote, "Contemporary gay men have seen in Sebastian at once a stunning advertisement for homosexual desire (indeed, a homoerotic ideal), and