Robin Ashenden

What my strange old friends taught me

As a young man, I sought out the company of Bohemians

  • From Spectator Life
Dean Street, Soho in 1955 (Getty Images)

As a young man I sought out the company of much older people in the arts, feeling they had some secret to life, often the same one in different guises, which I wanted, needed to discover. In the let-it-all-hang-out youth culture of the 1990s I felt awash, and the elderly (which to a 20-year-old meant anyone over 60) were also kinder, less threatening, more generous with their time. Two people who influenced me most were Daniel Farson – roistering Soho writer and broadcaster, a kind of modern-day Toby Belch – and Karin Jonzen, a septuagenarian Swedish sculptress with a studio off the King’s Road.

It was all pure gold, a kind of heightened life you swore you’d always strive for

Dan I met by design. I’d read his Soho in the Fifties, a marvellous memoir full of nostalgia about post-war Bohemia. A fan letter led to an ongoing correspondence (this kind of thing happened back then) which in turn became a full-blown friendship.

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