One bank holiday in the 1980s, when halfway respectable people had homes to go to, Francis Bacon was in the Colony Room club in Soho. He was in his seventies, but looked younger, his expensive leather jacket, fastened at hip level, concealing his paunch.

One bank holiday in the 1980s, when halfway respectable people had homes to go to, Francis Bacon was in the Colony Room club in Soho. He was in his seventies, but looked younger, his expensive leather jacket, fastened at hip level, concealing his paunch.

He stood near the Georgian window, as light from the wasted day lit up the cigarette smoke, and played with a sunken-bottomed and horribly uncomfortable barstool of tubular construction, much like the ones he used to design for Heal’s in the 1930s, although he didn’t want anyone to remember that. As he stood talking, buying more champagne for anyone within range, he remarked to me: “You see, I can’t paint.” Perhaps I agreed with him too readily, for he fixed me with those eyes set deep in his pear-shaped head as though I was being drawn into an ambush.

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