‘The most promiscuous man in town’: the life, loves and

He was the Californian surfer boy who by day gave bogus tours of his London house – and by night held epic orgies. Now a real tour, about the ceramicist he fell in love with, is opening at the astonishing residence

Time seems to have stood still at Dennis Severs’ House. Its four-poster bed has been left unmade, half-empty glasses of wine sit on the table and breakfast has been only partly eaten. It’s as if its 18th-century residents have only just departed. Yet, astonishingly, these interiors were created in the 1980s, by an American with a vision of history drawn largely from watching British costume dramas on TV. The house, in the Spitalfields area of London, remains one of the city’s sublime eccentric gems – and it is about to evolve once more, with a new tour that tells the story of Severs himself and of the glorious queer lives of those who lived with him.

Severs was a blond Californian surfer boy fresh out of college when he arrived in London in 1967. It was there that he found the freedom to live openly as a gay man. With an inborn sense of theatricality and a well-tailored coachman’s outfit, Severs was a natural showman who hosted tours around London in an open carriage. After he spied the opportunity in 1979 to buy the then decrepit house for just £18,000, he moved in with little more than a bedroll, a candlestick and a chamber pot – then swiftly embarked upon a camp, do-it-yourself aesthetic, conjuring the interiors as his fantasia on historical themes.