Includes index.

Highlights the lives and achievements of such notable men as the writers Harold Acton and Jean Cocteau and the artists Balthus and Giacometti.

James Lord has created another series of spirited, witty, profoundly moving portraits. He begins with Harold Acton, the writer and aesthete whose greatest achievement was his own personality and whose later years were swallowed up in the maintenance of his parents' grand villa outside Florence. Lord takes us next into the private world of the brilliant and flamboyant writer, artist, and social animal Jean Cocteau, whom he met on the coast of southern France. Then we find the willfully enigmatic painter Balthus living out a myth of aristocracy in a dilapidated French chateau while at the same time creating memorable art. "46, rue Hippolyte and After" tells of the heroic integrity and genius of Alberto Giacometti and his younger brother, Diego, and the author's own struggles to write a truthful life of the great sculptor. Haunting, mesmerizing, and endlessly entertaining, this book reverberates with Lord's unique gift for the intimate portrait.--From publisher description.