As a writer, and as a persona, Crisp managed to be at once witty and generous. His books are funny, but they are also often penetrating. He himself was unfailingly gracious, but often also relentless in exposing the absurdities and injustices of English and American social mores.

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If The Naked Civil Servant chronicles the mistreatment and pain (both borne with a stiff upper lip) of his youth in England, his later books stress the contentment he found in America, where life is presented as a comedy of manners.

Crisp also gained fame in his old age as an actor. He appeared as himself in a number of documentary films, including Resident Alien (1991), Naked in New York (1994), and The Celluloid Closet (1995), and in small parts in commercial films, such as Philadelphia (1993) and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995).

Perhaps his most interesting performance was as Queen Elizabeth I in Orlando (1993), Sally Potter's film based on Virginia Woolf's novel. He also starred opposite Lea DeLaria in Sara Moore's farcical Homo Heights (1997).

Crisp's life not only inspired several documentary films, but it was also the subject of a skillfully constructed play. Crisp gave playwright Tim Fountain permission to turn his diaries into a dramatic monologue entitled Resident Alien. Performed with style and subtlety by transvestite actor Bette Bourne, a veteran of drag shows, the play enjoyed successful runs on both sides of the Atlantic in 1999 and 2000.

Crisp died in Manchester, England on November 21, 1999, at the age of 90. He suffered a heart attack while on tour with his one-man show, An Audience with Quentin Crisp.

Although he lived in notoriously squalid conditions (his theory being that housework was entirely useless: "After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse," he quipped), Crisp left an estate valued in excess of $600,000. But his greatest legacy was his example of courage.

Despite the contradictions of his life, particularly the facts that he refused to campaign for homosexual equality and failed to grasp the seriousness of the AIDS epidemic, by the end of his life he had become a beloved figure in glbtq culture.

In its first century of existence, gay male autobiography has become increasingly more open, frank, and unapologetic.

Until recently, British television embraced lesbians and gays as Them rather than Us, but a more diversified and nuanced approach to all kinds of sexuality is likely to be the case in the future.

The Comedy of Manners, which flourished on the Restoration stage, has been particularly amenable to twentieth-century gay male writers as a vehicle for social satire in both dramatic and nondramatic works.

Homosexuality, both male and female, has a rich, divergent, and increasingly open expression in the literature of the twentieth century.

The association between homosexuality and fashion is multifaceted, ranging from the role of clothes as signifiers of sexual orientation to the immense contributions gay men have made at all levels of the fashion industry.

Although few gay actors have been permitted the luxury of openness, many of them have challenged and helped reconfigure notions of masculinity and, to a lesser extent, of homosexuality.

The gay and lesbian press is of prime importance in sustaining a frequently embattled minority and has been crucial in the development of a national mass movement for gay rights.

Home to one of England's largest and liveliest glbtq communities, Manchester has hosted EuroPride and the Pride Games and established a popular Lesbian and Gay Heritage Trail.

American realist artist Patrick Angus produced keenly observed and compassionate depictions of the gay underclass of the 1980s.

A proudly out lesbian from the very beginning of her career, the versatile Lea DeLaria has earned accolades for her talents as an actor, a singer, and a stand-up comic.

Petronius' Satyricon is both the best evidence for homosexual behavior at the height of the Roman Empire and one of the most bumptious homoerotic picaresque narratives ever written.

The American composer Ned Rorem has achieved literary prominence by publishing a series of diaries that include candid descriptions of homosexual love affairs and relationships.