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are recent books covering both these subjects, but I would point out that lately there have been several major exhibitions and retrospectives in both London and the provinces and a celebratory lunch at the Tate Britain to honour his ninetieth birthday. He often appeared at private views, not only his own but others relevant to his interests. Afterwards, if there were a supper in a restaurant, he would stay late, drinking lots of wine and his favourite liqueurs with their alchemical colours. He would talk too, admittedly, in his later days, somewhat repetitively. His favourite ‘surreal tale’ was of Queen Victoria, puzzled as to what to give her grandson, Prince Wilhelm, later the Kaiser, for his twenty-first birthday. After much pondering she reached a solution. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I’ll give him Kilimanjaro.’ After a time I really began to enjoy the inevitable repetition of this anecdote, and Conroy with his black hair, heavy spectacles, small moustache and curious, almost lemon, complexion, was an age-defying lesson to us all, repetitive or not.
    In recent years I had at his request opened several of his exhibitions including one in Ledbury, a rather interesting old town in the Midlands which was his birthplace. I mentioned it now to see if it struck a chord. ‘You remember,’ said his daughter, ‘I drove you there from London.’ Not a flicker of recognition or memory altered his vacant, seemingly empty bewilderment.
    After about ten minutes Michael suggested to his daughter that we were tiring him. She thanked us for coming and we left, passing the incontinent Pope.
    *
    Michael Woods is a brilliant photographer, considerably younger than I but equally plagued by various physical ailments. A mutual friend sent him to see me, almost forty years ago now, to show me his images of the Portobello Road, not the ‘me old cock sparrer’ aspects of it, as I might have expected, but its melancholy boarded-up shops and people mumbling to themselves. He’d also taken portraits of many writers and painters, never obvious publicity shots but attempts to get behind the mask, and usually very successful.
    I admired the work and recognized a surrealist eye. I was thinking of writing a book about Paris and suggested he became involved. As he knew very little about the movement I lent him several key books. Off he went via the Channel tunnel, to return with a portfolio beyond all my hopes. Furthermore he had not only photographed what Breton called ‘elected places’ (I had also given him a list of those aspects of the city the surrealists revered) but had recorded much else that seemed to him, and was, entirely relevant. The book was done, published and became a considerable and long-lived success.
    We remained friends. He’d got to know Conroy and to photograph him often and with impressive understanding of his character, its virtues and failings, and so it was that we set out together to see the Wizard of Lambolle Road, NW 3 .
    I have a terrible addiction to taxis, an extremely expensive addiction these days. The doctors tell me I should walk a little each day and, with every encouragement from Diana on economic as well as physical grounds, I do try, although I especially hate steps and stairs and having to changeplatforms; but on this expedition and accompanied by Michael Woods (whose Eeyore-like gloom alternates with sudden ill-suppressed bursts of laughter, an enjoyable contrast, or at least I find it so), I had resolved to hail cabs only in dire necessity.
    And so we set off at midday, Michael tall and gaunt, me short and plump, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, on the hottest day of the year. Knowing a certain amount of walking and the ascent and descent of several flights of steps in tube stations would be involved, I took my stout but pretty stick with the doggie’s-head handle.
    The tube part didn’t take too long, nor the change on to the Northern Line, nor our getting off at some obscure station I’d