A dandy trio …

… Three dashing Frenchmen captivate Victorian London | The Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Barnes has great fun introducing us to Pozzi’s sophisticated world, and letting his extravagant cast of dandies, aesthetes, and artists prance across the stage, but he doesn’t neglect the darker side. It was, he tells us, ‘an age of neurotic, even hysterical national anxiety’; the book is punctuated by the sound of gunshot — senseless duels and cold-blooded assassinations.