“It is to some extent true,” writes Brian Sewell, “that anal coition with a man (but not a woman) can involve, for the recipient, sexual stimulation and climax so intense that it is addictive.” You won’t read stuff like this in many other books. Sewell is a bracingly frank writer. Reading this makes you see the extent to which other autobiographers hide from frankness. Sewell takes up his life story in the late Sixties. He tells us about being an art dealer. There’s a section on Salvador Dalí that’s very memorable indeed. Also Anthony Blunt. And detailed scenes of Seventies London. You’ll whizz through it.
