Bachelors of a Different Sort

The bachelor has long held an ambivalent, uncomfortable and even at times an unfriendly position in society. This book carefully considers the complicated relationships between the modern queer bachelor and interior design, material culture and aesthetics in Britain between 1885 and 1957. These bachelors of a different sort created spaces that were centres of community, creativity and companionship, since long forgotten. The seven deadly sins of the modern bachelor (queerness, idolatry, askesis, decadence, the decorative, glamour, artifice) as the author has identified them, comprise a contested site freighted with contradiction and reveal in their respective ways the distinctly queer twinning of shame and resistance. All the bachelors whose aesthetic lives comprise this book were men of the creative arts, whether as writers, collectors, playwrights, actors, designers, antiquarians, sculptors, painters, photographers and/or illustrators. The first book to explore queer sexualities and