William Burroughs at the Royal Academy

A self-portrait Burroughs took in 1959 in Tangier where he spent several years working on the manuscript that would become Naked Lunch. Photograph: William S Burroughs/Royal Academy

Apocalypse was the first collaboration in 1988 between William Burroughs and Keith Haring, a partnership Timothy Leary described as 'like Dante and Titian getting together'. Photograph: Royal Academy/Royal Academy

Annie Leibovitz's portrait of Burroughs was taken in 1995 two years before he died. Alongside his name, the epitaph on his grave simply reads 'American Writer' Photograph: Annie Leibovitz/Royal Academy

Burroughs famously shot and killed his common-law wife in 1951 in a drunken game of William Tell. Despite this he still supported the right to bear arms, as captured in Robert Mapplethorpe's iconic portrait Photograph: Robert Mapplethorpe/Royal Academy

Junkie was Burroughs's first published novel in 1953. This is the cover of the 1964 US edition by Ace Books Photograph: Royal Academy/Royal Academy

Another self-portrait taken in 1959 in Tangier. Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac had joined him there earlier and helped him to type, edit and arrange his collection of writings into Naked Lunch. Photograph: William S Burroughs/Royal Academy