Harry Fainlight - International Times

International Times

Fainlight became a founding contributor of International Times (IT), a countercultural newspaper launched in October 1966 from the basement of the Indica Bookshop. Tales From The Embassy, a trilogy of stories by Dave Tomlin (another guiding spirit behind IT) features Fainlight as poet Harry Flame. The narrator recalls smiling at Flame on a beautiful morning, the latter replying with a grimace: "I’ll get you for that!",

When, at the suggestion of Ted Hughes, Faber & Faber offered to publish Fainlight’s work, he lit a petrol-soaked rag and posted it through the publisher’s letterbox. But he also joined in with the antic spirit of the time. In late summer 1967 John "Hoppy" Hopkins organised a parade, "The Death and Resurrection of IT". Fainlight appeared in this piece of improvised street theatre as the human personification of the magazine. He was carried in a coffin on a ‘rebirth journey’ from the Cenotaph in Whitehall to Notting Hill Gate (including a ride on the Circle Line), where the procession wound through Portobello Market and IT (Fainlight) was symbolically resurrected at the Tavistock Road junction.

However, when Michael Horovitz's anthology, Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain was published by Penguin in 1967, Fainlight, amongst a few other underground poets of the time, was not included.