It was known as the golden age of the music-hall-and introduced to the world an exciting range of artistes whose lives were so blatantly scandalous that they were incapable of crossing the Channel or the Atlantic without raising the hackles of the censors and moral groups. Some even raised eyebrows on home soil, in an age when France was believed to have been liberated in the wake of La Belle poque. What makes these artistes of paramount importance,...