The pictures on this page show a writer I’ve admired since I was a teenager.
For some reason it didn’t work when I tried sending him these pictures by email, so I’m posting them here on this public page – but in modified form, as the work isn’t finished.
Who is he?
Hunter Davies edited The Sunday Times magazine in the glory days when that job came with a chauffeur – so he told me – and a staff of 50 people.
(Fifty!)
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As well as writing journalism, for decades and decades, he has published many books.
These included fiction, but the ones I particularly enjoyed were journalistic. They involved embedding himself with, among other things:
- the country’s (then) finest soccer team, Tottenham Hotspur, and
- within a state school, one of the first comprehensives.
He wrote the official biography of the Beatles, the biggest band of the last half century, and ghosted memoirs by some of England’s best footballers.
The wall by the window has a lot of football-related framed photos on it.
One of the first preliminary sketches I did after visiting Hunter of the photos on that wall.
You may not immediately recognise here the faces of England footy heroes Wayne Rooney and Paul Gascoigne:
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He’s also written books about Hampstead, a subject close to my own heart, and a memoir, Letters To Margaret, addressed to his late wife Margaret Forster, the author, who died in 2016.
They moved into this house 65 years ago
And this room has been Hunter’s office all that time. It’s on the first floor, overlooking the street.
As you see (below) I’ve used the magnifying glass thingy on my iPhone to highlight some of the many items in the room that seem particularly important.
Here you can see:
- A framed photo of Margaret Forster on the set of a film based on her novel Georgy Girl, standing beside the actor James Mason
- A ceramic Beatle on the mantelpiece
- A framed photo of Hunter and Margaret by the sea, with another photo of Margaret tucked behind it
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To be perfectly clear
The two wider pictures you’ve seen already on this page form part of a single, larger image.
As you may have deduced, the larger image features two versions of Hunter.
In one, on the left, he’s at his desk. In the other he’s in the armchair facing the TV which he uses to watch football.
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Thank you for reading this far. I thought you might appreciate some moving lines I’ve copied from Letters to Margaret, which also has some very funny bits.
After fifty-five years of marriage, so many of them spent in this house since 1963, it was not surprising that I imagined you were still here. Your presence was ever-present […] Traces of you, evidence of your taste and decisions, are still all around.
I can’t wait to tell you all the things I have done since you died […] you will be appalled by some of my behaviour. But I hope you will enjoy it… [In the world more generally there have been] so many awful dreary things. You have been well out of it.
The biggest thing I have missed these last six years [is] having you to talk to, to tell things to, then listen to your reactions and opinions.
Most evenings when I am here in this house on my own, having my lonesome meal, I look down on myself from the ceiling.
[Since you died I’ve thought of myself] as married to you. And I still do. So why would I want to marry someone else? In my head, you will always be my wife.