SELF-styled stately homo Quentin Crisp is celebrated on-stage in a critically acclaimed solo show called Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope at Swindon Arts Centre on Sunday night.

Written and performed by Mark Farrelly, directed by Linda Marlowe, it debuted to rave reviews at the 2014 Edinburgh Festival and immediately transferred to a run at the off-West End St James Theatre. The play has toured the UK since.

Naked Hope depicts the legendary writer, artist, raconteur and wit at two distinct phases of his extraordinary life. First, we meet him in the late 1960s in his filthy Chelsea flat (“Don’t lose your nerve: after the first four years the dirt won’t get any worse”). Here Quentin looks back on a life of degradation and rejection, being repeatedly beaten for being flamboyantly gay as early as the 1930s, but also ostracised simply for daring to live life on his own terms.

The second part of the play moves to New York in the 1990s. Here a much older Quentin, finally embraced by society, regales the audience with his sharply-observed, hard-earned philosophy on how to have a lifestyle: “Life will be more difficult if you try to become yourself. But avoiding this difficulty renders life meaningless. So discover who you are. And be it. Like mad!”

Quentin, who was born in 1908 and died in 1999, came from a conventional suburban background. He worked as a model for life drawing classes in art colleges and published a memoir called The Naked Civil Servant, which went on to be made into a television drama starring John Hurt. He also appeared in films and television.

Naked Hope is billed as a glorious, truthful and uplifting celebration of a unique human being, and of the importance of being true to yourself. Tickets £18.50 from 01793 524481 or visit swindontheatres.co.uk.