The vice-chancellor of Sussex, Prof Michael Farthing, has a next-door neighbour who is 91, prone to burst into song and capable of conversing over the garden fence on any subject likely to engage an eminent academic. His name is Denis Healey.
Harold Wilson's defence secretary and James Callaghan's chancellor was never a one-dimensional career politician. As he wrote in his autobiography: "My family has always meant more to me than my profession. And I have always been as interested in music, painting and poetry as in politics."
And photography, it would seem, which is one of several interests that he shares with his neighbour. After casting an eye over Healey's camerawork, Farthing started setting up an exhibition, open to the public for six days, at Sussex's InQbate Creativity Zone. "We needed a good space to reflect the media culture that Healey existed in," says history of art professor David Alan Mellor.
So the exhibition includes his appearances on Pathe News and This is Your Life as well as his bushy-eyed puppet from Spitting Image. History of art students have teamed up with others from media practice and theory to curate it. "Eight of them gave up their summer vacation to do it," says Mellor.
To them Healey is a historical figure, if indeed they had heard of him at all. "I hadn't," says media student Lucy Lyon, 21. "But when I met him, he was very charming." Art history undergraduate Luska Mengham, also 21, was bowled over by his enthusiasm for the arts in general. "We called the exhibition Furniture of the Mind, a quote from one of his books that embodies the extent of his eclectic interests and passions," she says.
The photographs reflect the family man, the curious traveller, the political insider and the lover of the arts. The poet Stephen Spender looks effortlessly dishevelled, and photographer Don McCullin makes a rare appearance on the other side of the lens. A youthful Condoleezza Rice looks relaxed and smiling at a café table. "He met her when she was a sophomore on an exchange," says media student Peter Harte, 39.
Political contemporaries include Israeli prime ninister Golda Meir pictured in a softer light than usual. "The image is almost Rembrandt-esque," Mellor points out. Nye Bevan is caught wearing a beret, Michael Foot an anorak, and a beaming Tony Benn is in what looks like a tight collar and tie. There are Tories, too. An elaborately constructed shot captures Norman Tebbit in a TV studio. And who's this emerging onto a glorious looking beach? Lord Hailsham, no less, looking rather ingloriously flabby in flippers while pulling up his trunks.
More flattering holiday photos are of Edna Healey and the children framed by the oval of a tent flap. It's an idyllic image that seems to confirm the politician's contention that they always did mean more to him than his profession.
• Denis Healey: Furniture of the Mind is open to the public at InQbate, Sussex University, Brighton, from October 11 to 17. For more information and opening times, visit www.sussex.ac.uk/furnitureofthemind
