What do you think?
Rate this book
Never a Normal Man: An Autobiography
448 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
16 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 6, 2012
A remarkably honest Autobiography and meditation on the Soho Artists, Writers and Photographers of the 50's and 60's of the last century. My first job was in Gerrard Street in Soho so it brought back lots of memories.
July 13, 2025
Chapter 10 of this memoir is titled "The Idol of Millions", in reference to a period in the 1950s during which Daniel Farson was a household name as a cutting-edge television interviewer and documentary-maker working for Associated-Rediffusion: such was Farson’s fame that he was parodied by Benny Hill, and tourist boats on the Thames would point out his riverside home in Limehouse. Celebrity had found Farson despite some unconventional career choices suggestive of curiosity and a sense of adventure rather than burning ambition: although he had previously worked as a journalist and photographer. he had thrown it in to take up a menial position in the merchant navy (although he kept his hand in with some reporting, to the captain’s fury). Back in London, his break into television came via a chance conversation in Soho’s French Pub, and it seems that he regarded fame lightly, even cynically. He also experienced one of the downsides when an arrest for being drunk and disorderly prompted excruciating headlines.
Farson's presence on the 1950s Soho "scene" (the subject of one of his books) provided him with numerous useful contacts, such as the photographer John Deakin (whose photo of Farson is used as the book’s cover), Colin Wilson and, probably most significantly, Francis Bacon, with whom he caroused at venues such as the Colony Room (see review here): disarmingly, Farson had no pretensions to having knowledge of art, but he became Bacon’s biographer and at the time of his death (shortly after this memoir was published) he was working on a book about Gilbert and George.
Farson perhaps always took being well-connected for granted: his father was the UK-based American author Negley Farson, and his mother, "Eve" Stoker, was the niece of Bram Stoker (see review here). As a child evacuee in North America his American godfather Tom Seyster introduced him to Somerset Maugham and Gerald Haxton, and it was his father who got him into teenage journalism with Guy L’Estrange’s decrepit Central Press (called "the Central Press Agency" by Farson). This was prior to his national service, which as a dual national he chose to take as an American serviceman – at first he remained in England (discovering that shopkeepers tried to take advantage of assumed American unfamiliarly with Britain’s convoluted pre-decimal currency) and then in Germany, where he had an encounter with Helen Keller. Cambridge came next, where he edited a magazine that published Peter and Anthony Schaffer, Julian Slade, Norman St John Stevas, Gavin Lambert, Lindsay Anderson and Kenneth Tynan.
While living in the East End Farson tried his hand at a completely different venture, reflective of another interest: he bought a run-down pub on the Isle of Dogs, which he renamed The Waterman’s Arms and developed into an entertainment venue offering old time music hall acts. Culturally, it was a great success, and Farson recalls that it became "one of the places to go". Visitors included Groucho Marx, Clint Eastwood and Frankie Howerd; "Francis Bacon brought William Burroughs", and Judy Garland gave an impromptu late-night concert in the street outside to evade licensing regulations. As a viable business, though, it was something of a disaster, and Farson was eventually forced to sell. Farson does not seem to have a judgemental person, but his self-reproaches for his own lack of foresight when it came to financial matters are mixed with invective against financial advisers and bank managers. As time went on he was forced to sell possessions to make ends meet, and eventually to downsize from his inherited home in north Devon to a smaller residence in Appledore.
Not all of Farson’s associations were creditable: he admits to having been attracted by the "glamour" of the Kray twins, but writes that he only really understood how dangerous they were after the Lord Boothy affair. On one occasion Ronnie admonished him to tone down some bad language while there were "ladies present", but he also also provided Farson with a minder, one Edward Smith, who was inevitably known as "Mad Teddy". Through residence in Devon he got caught up in the Jeremy Thorpe affair, due to being acquainted with both Thorpe and Norman Scott, and was even interviewed by police.
Farson writes candidly about his sexuality and his alcoholism: his fondness for rough young men in one instance compromised his work as a television presenter due to a black eye. The alcoholism was perhaps genetic: his father was similarly afflicted, and while young he resented well-meant advice from adults who asked him not to judge his old man too harshly – in fact, he didn’t mind at all, and writes that one of his regrets is that they never got drunk together.
Farson doesn’t write much about his later career, although there is a photograph of an art quiz show he presented for Channel 4 in the 1980s, in which Vincent Price was one of the guests (during which Price encountered and fell out with Roald Dahl). He continued to work as a newspaper journalist and as a television critic in the 1980s, although in the latter role his wonderlust was once again at the expense of his career as his absences created an opening for his deputy Alan Coren to take over. The last part of the book is a travelogue of a visit to the Caucasus during the last days of the USSR, undertaken in tribute to his father.
One area that Farson plays down is his career as a writer, and his interest in the macabre. Perhaps he regarded tomes such as The Hamlyn Book of Ghosts in Fact and Fiction and Vampires, Zombies and Monster Men as hack work, but for a generation now in middle age Farson’s name is associated less with the "Soho of the Fifties" as with the "weird 1970s". There are, though, a few pages devoted to his work on Jack the Ripper – in the 1950s he made a documentary featuring interviews with people who had been alive at the time, and in 1972 published a book on the subject. His researches were informed by access to the private notes of Sir Melville Macnaghten, who became Assistant Chief Constable of the Met in 1889; these were in the hands of his daughter Christobel Aberconway (typically, Farson adds that she was the one-time "mistress of Samuel Courtauld").
Farson’s gossipy digressions are interesting, but rely on casual recollection. One mistake I noticed was the claim that the ornithologist David Bannerman (a close friend, and perhaps more, of his mother) had married "J.B. Priestley’s widow Jacquetta Hawkes" – in fact, Bannerman had married Priestley’s earlier ex-wife Jane Wyndham-Lewis (née Holland). The error slipped in despite Hawkes’s obituaries appearing during the period when he was writing the book.
Farson's presence on the 1950s Soho "scene" (the subject of one of his books) provided him with numerous useful contacts, such as the photographer John Deakin (whose photo of Farson is used as the book’s cover), Colin Wilson and, probably most significantly, Francis Bacon, with whom he caroused at venues such as the Colony Room (see review here): disarmingly, Farson had no pretensions to having knowledge of art, but he became Bacon’s biographer and at the time of his death (shortly after this memoir was published) he was working on a book about Gilbert and George.
Farson perhaps always took being well-connected for granted: his father was the UK-based American author Negley Farson, and his mother, "Eve" Stoker, was the niece of Bram Stoker (see review here). As a child evacuee in North America his American godfather Tom Seyster introduced him to Somerset Maugham and Gerald Haxton, and it was his father who got him into teenage journalism with Guy L’Estrange’s decrepit Central Press (called "the Central Press Agency" by Farson). This was prior to his national service, which as a dual national he chose to take as an American serviceman – at first he remained in England (discovering that shopkeepers tried to take advantage of assumed American unfamiliarly with Britain’s convoluted pre-decimal currency) and then in Germany, where he had an encounter with Helen Keller. Cambridge came next, where he edited a magazine that published Peter and Anthony Schaffer, Julian Slade, Norman St John Stevas, Gavin Lambert, Lindsay Anderson and Kenneth Tynan.
While living in the East End Farson tried his hand at a completely different venture, reflective of another interest: he bought a run-down pub on the Isle of Dogs, which he renamed The Waterman’s Arms and developed into an entertainment venue offering old time music hall acts. Culturally, it was a great success, and Farson recalls that it became "one of the places to go". Visitors included Groucho Marx, Clint Eastwood and Frankie Howerd; "Francis Bacon brought William Burroughs", and Judy Garland gave an impromptu late-night concert in the street outside to evade licensing regulations. As a viable business, though, it was something of a disaster, and Farson was eventually forced to sell. Farson does not seem to have a judgemental person, but his self-reproaches for his own lack of foresight when it came to financial matters are mixed with invective against financial advisers and bank managers. As time went on he was forced to sell possessions to make ends meet, and eventually to downsize from his inherited home in north Devon to a smaller residence in Appledore.
Not all of Farson’s associations were creditable: he admits to having been attracted by the "glamour" of the Kray twins, but writes that he only really understood how dangerous they were after the Lord Boothy affair. On one occasion Ronnie admonished him to tone down some bad language while there were "ladies present", but he also also provided Farson with a minder, one Edward Smith, who was inevitably known as "Mad Teddy". Through residence in Devon he got caught up in the Jeremy Thorpe affair, due to being acquainted with both Thorpe and Norman Scott, and was even interviewed by police.
Farson writes candidly about his sexuality and his alcoholism: his fondness for rough young men in one instance compromised his work as a television presenter due to a black eye. The alcoholism was perhaps genetic: his father was similarly afflicted, and while young he resented well-meant advice from adults who asked him not to judge his old man too harshly – in fact, he didn’t mind at all, and writes that one of his regrets is that they never got drunk together.
Farson doesn’t write much about his later career, although there is a photograph of an art quiz show he presented for Channel 4 in the 1980s, in which Vincent Price was one of the guests (during which Price encountered and fell out with Roald Dahl). He continued to work as a newspaper journalist and as a television critic in the 1980s, although in the latter role his wonderlust was once again at the expense of his career as his absences created an opening for his deputy Alan Coren to take over. The last part of the book is a travelogue of a visit to the Caucasus during the last days of the USSR, undertaken in tribute to his father.
One area that Farson plays down is his career as a writer, and his interest in the macabre. Perhaps he regarded tomes such as The Hamlyn Book of Ghosts in Fact and Fiction and Vampires, Zombies and Monster Men as hack work, but for a generation now in middle age Farson’s name is associated less with the "Soho of the Fifties" as with the "weird 1970s". There are, though, a few pages devoted to his work on Jack the Ripper – in the 1950s he made a documentary featuring interviews with people who had been alive at the time, and in 1972 published a book on the subject. His researches were informed by access to the private notes of Sir Melville Macnaghten, who became Assistant Chief Constable of the Met in 1889; these were in the hands of his daughter Christobel Aberconway (typically, Farson adds that she was the one-time "mistress of Samuel Courtauld").
Farson’s gossipy digressions are interesting, but rely on casual recollection. One mistake I noticed was the claim that the ornithologist David Bannerman (a close friend, and perhaps more, of his mother) had married "J.B. Priestley’s widow Jacquetta Hawkes" – in fact, Bannerman had married Priestley’s earlier ex-wife Jane Wyndham-Lewis (née Holland). The error slipped in despite Hawkes’s obituaries appearing during the period when he was writing the book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews