Richard Hollis mentions the powerful covers David King created for the London Review of Books in the 1980s.
I remember him blazing into the office with marvellous black and white photographs. He captured his great friend Francis Wyndham in conversation with the young Alan Hollinghurst. Musing together, they looked, one friend remarked, “like two cardinals”. He supplied a picture of Isaac Babel, billowing from the page like a ghost. In 1989 he produced a previously unpublished photograph of Jean Genet, taken in the early 70s at a Lancaster Gate hotel. It was a tremendous close-up: just nose, eyebrows, set mouth. King remarked while taking the picture that Genet kept very still. “That,” Genet replied, “is because I am dead.”
“You can’t be dead – you’re the greatest living writer.”
“No, no, Noël Coward is the greatest living writer.”
“But Noël Coward is dead.”
“Oh,” said Genet, “that’s good.”
King had, though he refused to admit it, the ear of a gifted writer as well as a mighty eye.
