Some remarkable men

Some Remarkable Men 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.

In "The Strange Case of Count de Rola" 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.