Camp!: The Story of the Attitude That Conquered the World

Paul Baker

Hardcover | 12.9 x 1.9 x 19.9 cm | 320 pp

Footnote Press | 2024 | 9781804440322

Camp has been an inescapable part of popular culture for at least the last 150 years. Famously unrestrained and ever evolving, it has not only captured the cultural imagination, but also played an important role as a form of protest and resistance.

Paul Baker takes us through camp's rebellious and revolutionary past with warmth, humour and sensitivity, starting with the court of Louis XIV and the dandies of the eighteenth century through to Showgirls, Harlem's drag balls and Columbian telenovelas.

Throughout its history, camp has been a place of refuge and renewal, of heroism and hedonism. This glorious celebration traces camp's journey from the fringes of society to the mainstream. 

Paul Baker is a Professor of English Language at Lancaster University and has written over twenty books, for both academic and popular audiences. Paul is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

'Paul Baker captures the essence of an essentially uncapturable phenomenon. My dear, she's on fire!' Damian Barr

'A snappy guide to an all-conquering aesthetic' Financial Times