Camp style, in behaviour, clothing, artistic output or emotions, has never been properly explored or defined. Jean Cocteau, as camp a figure as Paris has ever produced, said in Vanity Fair in 1922, 'I am a lie that tells the truth.' This paradox is the basis of Philip Core's personal definitions of camp, seen from the inside. His savagely witty depictions of more than two centuries of camp find it embodied in personalities and places, objects and artefacts. He has written a who's who and a what's what of camp, a deceptively descriptive and factual lexicon, allowing the reader to build up a kaleidoscopic picture of camp through the ages. It is complemented with 150 photographs and a vivacious foreword by England's foremost authority on surrealism, eccentric behaviour and hats, jazz singer George Melly.--From publisher description.

The noted actress recounts her early shyness and anxieties, her years as a contract actress at Universal, her break with the studio system, her subsequent career in film, the theater, and television, and her personal life.

A grisly murder reveals the hateful secrets that lie beneath a small town’s surface The locals call her the Ballou. An illustrator for a high-fashion magazine, she has been the talk of the upstate town of Sutton ever since she first appeared, paying cash for one of the finest houses on Nicholas Street. Daring, gaudy, and grand, she inspires envy in the women and lust in the men. And in one member of this quiet town, she is about to inspire murder. The trouble starts when her rakish New York lover moves in full time, scandalizing the prudish Ayers family next door. When the Ayers’ maid pays a social call to the Ballou, she finds her lying dead at the foot of a staircase—gray, cold, and fabulous no more. Suspicion falls on the Ayerses, whose starched exterior hides a wealth of ugly secrets. From this interlocking narrative told from the perspectives of the citizens of Sutton comes a reminder that no town is too small for murder.