Never a Normal Man is the autobiography of Daniel Farson, published just before his death in 1997 at the age of seventy.
A list of the many different things he did gives something of the flavour of his extraordinary life: Parliamentary reporter; photographer for Picture Post; television presenter; pub owner; author, and chronicler of London.
He is a funny mixture as a writer; a spinner of yarns, yet with an essential honesty, particularly about himself, which makes him an attractive companion on the page.
He is also one of the only people to write about photography in a down-to-earth way, admitting the role of luck in getting a great shot, and acknowledging the help of the darkroom team.
Reading this book, you come away with the impression that Farson had a rare talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but if anything, he sells himself rather short here. For example, the chapters on his TV career in the early days of independent television stress the weirdness and unreality of sudden fame. In fact, he was a highly successful and well-liked interviewer.
Despite his cut-glass accent, he took a more tolerant and liberal view of the people he met than was the BBC norm at the time. His Anglo-American background and status as a gay man when that was illegal, gave him something of an outsider’s eye. His sympathy for those who do not quite fit in is apparent in programmes about such topics as racially mixed marriages, nudism, the revival of witchcraft and teenage life in Brighton.
Similarly, he rather glosses over the fact that his later writing career was actually quite successful. He was one of the first to attempt to solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper, as well as writing about his great uncle Bram Stoker. Perhaps best of all are the books illustrated with his own photographs. Sacred Monsters (1988) comprises remembrances of famous writers and artists he encountered during his time as a journalist. These include Robert Graves, Somerset Maugham, Henry Williamson and Noel Coward.
He took a similar approach in two more London books. Soho in the Fifties (1987) is the classic account of the Bohemian life of that era. It’s arguable that no-one outside Soho would have heard of the Colony Room Club if it wasn’t for Farson. It’s also probably true that reading Farson’s account is more enjoyable than the reality can have been. His prose has more sparkle than last night’s flat champagne. And with the sheer amount of alcohol being consumed, it’s remarkable that anyone could remember anything about the night before.
Farson might have felt he was something of a Boswell to the Johnsons, but by including photographs by John Deakin, and writing about their relationship, he helped the revival of Deakin’s posthumous reputation. The portrait of Farson on the cover is by Deakin.
Similarly, his long friendship with the painter Francis Bacon meant he was the first to interview Bacon on television, and eventually led to him writing an unauthorised biography after Bacon’s death.
Limehouse Days (1991) is an account of his move to a house by the river there, as well as his attempts to revive music hall entertainment in a pub on the isle of dogs. This is a picture of the East End just before the docks closed, when it was still a foreign country to people from other parts of London.
He recycles material from these books here, making Never a Normal Man a sort of compendium of his writing as well as an autobiography.
Farson chooses to emphasise the difficulties in life that he feels his homosexuality and heavy drinking led him to, even if he glosses over quite a lot in his personal life. He is quite hard on himself about some of his behaviour. He stresses his financial ineptitude. But as he says of the finally unsuccessful pub venture: better to have lost one’s money that way than on the stock exchange.
He was the son of a famous father, the American foreign correspondent and author Negley Farson. There is often a pattern that sons of high-achieving fathers, for whatever reason, don’t achieve very much themselves, or if they do, it is in a completely different field. Despite the impression sometimes given here, Daniel Farson achieved a great deal, leaving a rich legacy of books, photographs and television films.
The Good Reader 