Daniel Farson - 1970s To 1990s

1970s To 1990s

He remained, however, a prolific author and a prominent figure in the art world. He produced several volumes of memoirs. Soho in the Fifties recalled his participation in London's west end Bohemia. Limehouse Days (1991) recalled his disastrous East End pub venture. These and other books were illustrated with his own photographs.

He wrote a number of studies of artists and authors. The Man Who Wrote Dracula (1975) was a life of his grand-uncle, Bram Stoker. While living at his father's old house in North Devon he established a close friendship with the writer Henry Williamson (an Agrarian Right ally of James Wentworth Day); Farson paid tribute to Williamson with a book entitled Henry: An Appreciation of Henry Williamson published in 1982, five years after Williamson's death. Sacred Monsters (1988), was a collection of essays on artists and writers he had known.

Farson also wrote the authorized biography of his friend, the painter Francis Bacon (The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (1994) - at Bacon's insistence this was not published until after the artist's death). The 1998 film Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon starring Derek Jacobi and Daniel Craig draws heavily on the book, showing Farson (played by Adrian Scarborough) socialising with Bacon, as well as interviewing him on television. The film is dedicated to him.

His last book was a "portrait" of the artists Gilbert and George, published posthumously in 1999 (he had already, in 1991, published an informal account of a trip he took with them to Moscow). He devised the Channel 4 art quiz Gallery and he worked as TV critic and, later, art critic for The Mail on Sunday (oddly, another Associated Newspapers title).

He also wrote travel books, including A Traveller in Turkey, The Independent Traveller's guide to Turkey and A Dry Ship to the Mountains (Down the Volga and Across the Caucasus in My Father's Footsteps), the book version of the children's TV series The Clifton House Mystery (produced by HTV West for ITV in 1978), and an appreciation of "Marie Lloyd and music hall" and a recollection of "Soho in the Fifties" (a time and a place in which he had found one of his few natural homes).