Finally finished!
I will have to queue this for a re-reading at some stage because the time it took to read diluted the minutiae a bit and left me floundering in parts.
I enjoyed the latter third of the book much more than the beginning. I had been put off early by the continuous stream of poetical desire coming from Humbert.
OK - I tend to think that Humbert was not a particularly handsome man. Actually I felt that his unreliability as narrator extended to his perception of his appearance. At a couple of places he references the rather large size of his organ - which gave me a hint that his perception of himself was possibly "generous".
Compare his descriptions of himself versus his description of C.Q. and his "friend" Gaston, both paedophiles in ways only slightly different from himself. What a happy juxtaposition he creates of himself against these fat, hideous creatures; his noble bearing, his supreme intelligence. I would not be surprised to find out that he was not half the creature he pretended and his warped self-perception extended to his appearance.
I also think despite his understanding that he had destroyed Lolita, he still maintained a kind of nobility - a pureness - in his aims (if not his actions). For some reason it brings about the saying, "the end justifies the means".
In any case, the respectable are laid low in this book: the successful playwright, the lecturer(?) Gaston and the academic Humbert. Purveyors of culture and wisdom - all reprehensible destroyers of youth. If we wanted to take the themes of the book to a broader level - why not start there?