Editing Quentin Crisp (section)

===Early life===
Denis Charles Pratt was born at Wolverton, Egmond Road, [[Sutton, London|Sutton]], [[Surrey]], on 25 December 1908, the fourth and youngest child of "feckless and frequently unemployed" [[solicitor]] Spencer Charles Pratt, and former [[governess]] Frances Marion, née Phillips.<ref>{{cite ODNB | url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-73162 | doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/73162 | title=The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | date=2004 }}</ref> He changed his name to Quentin Crisp in his twenties after leaving home, and expressed a feminine appearance to a degree that shocked contemporary Londoners and provoked "[[gay-bashing]]" assaults.<ref name="Tatchell"/>

By his own account, Crisp was "effeminate" from an early age, resulting in his being teased while at [[Kingswood House School]]<ref name="qandp">{{cite book |last=Barrow |first=Andrew |title=Quentin and Philip |date=8 November 2002 |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=978-0-333-78051-0 }}</ref> in [[Epsom]], Surrey, from which he won a scholarship to [[Denstone College]], [[Uttoxeter]], Staffordshire, in 1922. After leaving school in 1926, Crisp studied journalism at [[King's College London]], but failed to graduate in 1928, going on to take art classes at the [[Regent Street Polytechnic]].

Around this time, Crisp began visiting the cafés of [[Soho]], his favourite being The Black Cat in [[Old Compton Street]], meeting other young gay men and [[rent boys]], and experimenting with make-up and [[transvestism|women's clothes]]. For six months, he worked as a prostitute;<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/211644.stm "Crisp: The naked civil servant"], BBC News, November twenty-first, 1999</ref> in a 1998 interview,<ref>{{Cite web|date=21 December 1998|title=Quentin Crisp interview: Old Spice|url=http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/quentin-crisp-interview-old-spice-1193631.html|access-date=9 October 2020|website=The Independent|language=en}}</ref> he said he was looking for love, but found only degradation, a reflection he had previously expressed in the 1968 ''[[World in Action]]'' interview, which aired on television in 1971.

Crisp left home to move to the [[central London|centre of London]] at the end of 1930, and after dwelling in a succession of flats, found a [[Bedsit|bed-sitting]] room in Denbigh Street, [[Pimlico]], where he "held court with London's brightest and roughest characters."{{citation needed|date=April 2022}} His 'outlandish' appearance—he wore bright make-up, dyed his long hair crimson, painted his fingernails and wore sandals to display his painted toe-nails—brought admiration and curiosity from some quarters, but generally attracted hostility and violence from strangers passing him in the streets.