In my side hustle as a freelance magazine writer, I started at The Face, but my main outlet was Time Out, then a very different publication to now.

Usually I published something every week: music and book reviews, features and interviews. The interviews were nearly all with international or American writers, people like John Rechy, Breyten Breytenbach, Isabel Allende, Bharati Mukherjee, Aharon Applefeld, Vasily Aksyonov.

But there were three writers who stood apart from the others. William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Paul Bowles all knew each other back in the 1950s in Tangiers and their lives were very much intertwined. Also I got to know them not through magazines, but various mutual acquaintances.

This part of the website is about my meetings with them. Often, I was accompanied by a friend called Martin Fuller, a Birmingham photographer and graphic designer. (He designed Steel Pulse’s logo and many album covers.) A lot of his photos are published here for the first time, but obviously any use needs his name credited. You can find his work on Instagram at instagram@martinfuller1947.

You can get in touch with me via this website or through @davedarby26.