Scar-faced, ex-jailbird Frank Norman was part of the '50s & '60s Soho bohemian set and friends with Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, Dylan Thomas and other habitués of the infamous Colony Room club. After being abandoned as a child, growing up in institutions, and working as a fairground worker, he landed in Soho, became a petty criminal and spent time in prison where he learned to paint and write.
Back in Soho on leaving jail, he became a successful author, writer of smash hit cockney musical 'Fings Ain’t What They Used To Be’, the acclaimed prison memoir Bang to Rights, and several novels - but never painted again. In the early '60s he wrote 'Soho Night and Day', an evocative survey of the area in its seedy, cosmopolitan prime, with photographs by his pal Jeffrey Bernard (the most famous alcoholic in London).
Frank's grandson, Joe Daniel, talked to the Bureau about him and the bohemian low-life of Soho in the '50s & ‘60s.
See our exhibition: BEHIND BARS - Frank Norman’s Prison Paintings.
