Dorian van Braam the Elder RIP

 

This is not an easy one to write. After all the terrible things that have happened this year - to me and to millions of others - it was most pleasant to visit my dear friend Dorian van Braam the Elder at his apartment near Hove seafront a few days before Christmas. 

My partner Laura and I spent a wonderful evening with him - Dorian was so full of life, talking about his plans: to make a film of one of his colourful novels, to buy another plane (he once crashed a plane into a helicopter), to sue the AA (one of their vans had knocked him off his bicycle in London) and many, many others. We could hardly keep up. It was an invigorating evening after a hellish couple of months.

Dorian was intending to drive to his estate in Ireland for Christmas, but it was not to be. The following day, he emerged from a cafe in Hove, collapsed and died. Nothing could have been more unexpected.

Since then, Laura has written a brilliant obituary of Dorian van Braam the Elder, using some of the photographs I have taken of him over the years. I won't attempt to reprise the story of his life - Laura has penned it so well. All I can say is that I thought Dorian to be a true one-off, a unique character from another era who still rode a powerful motorbike, wrote thousands of words a day - and had the balls to stand up to The Man! It was an honour and a privilege to have known him and been his friend.

Here are my pictures of Dorian van Braam the Elder, ending with what I believe to be the last picture taken of him before his untimely departure from our screwed-up planet: