Cocteau (Nonpareil Books, 40)

Jean Cocteau, a major French 20th-century artist, was a deliberate scandal. The astonishing variety of his work as poet, novelist, playwright, and film-maker (The Blood of a Poet, Beauty and the Beast, Orpheus); and the contradictions and paradoxes of his private life, the charm and the nastiness, the generosity, and the egomania, the poise and the anguish of an opium-addicted homosexual, a man who knew everyone who mattered in the arts, and who capped an avant-garde life by entering, without seeming contradiction, the formidable conservative precincts of the Académie Francaise-all this is elegantly woven by Mr Steegmuller into the gorgeous tapestry of this award-winning and riveting biography.