Conville & Walsh

Sebastian’s mother was an alcoholic who regularly attempted suicide, and his father a drunk and crippled billionaire who left him when he was young. As a 21-year-old man, he embarked on a relationship with Jimmy Boyle (Scotland’s most notorious gangster and murderer who was also sleeping with Sebastian’s wife).

DANDY IN THE UNDERWORLD charts Sebastian Horsley’s years as a dandy, an artist, a visitor of prostitutes (and a period as a prostitute), his time as a sex-advice columnist, his love affairs, his descent into heroin and crack addiction, his desperate attempts and even more desperate failures to overcome it, his crucifixion and his eventual success in finding a kind of peace.

This is a man who, in every conceivable way, has lived a life of extremes. Sebastian is at once monstrous and loveable, hugely arrogant and painfully vulnerable. Full of Quentin Crisp quips and Wildean aphorism, DANDY IN THE UNDERWORLD is a painfully honest and painfully funny book which demonstrates that he has also the ability to laugh at himself.