Recollections of Léonard, Hairdresser to Queen Marie-Antoinette, AKA I am a genius and slept with a lot of women and totally heard every important conversation in Versailles EVER and did I mention I was from Gascony cause I feel like I haven’t mentioned it in this chapter yet.

It is exactly what it sounds like and it is GLORIOUS. I can’t believe I’m only now finding out about this.

Léonard Autié was just a poor chap from Gascony when he arrived in Paris, determined to become the foremost hairdresser in the universe. Through pure talent and sexual prowess, he is able to rise until he is appointed hairdresser to none other than the Dauphine of France, and well… the rest is History.

If you like stories about gossip and fashion, or you’d like to know what Versailles was like when Marie-Antoinette lived there, or you just want to read about the escapades of a french dandy, give this book a shot. Of course take everything in it with a good helping of salt – while as far as I can tell all the important historical events depicted in this are true, it’s pretty certain Léonard embellished them quite a bit and made himself a much bigger player than he actually was. The man was a Gascon, after all, and if there’s one thing french literature has taught me it’s that Gascons are self-aggrandizing swashbuckling poets with a 50% chance of being the protagonist of any given novel.