Celebrities, drugs and a seemingly endless party: an updated biography tells the vivid story of a swinging 60s art dealer
Art dealer Robert Fraser was handsome, glamorous, very well-dressed, and the encapsulation of swinging London. At his Mount Street flat, on any evening in the mid 60s, you might encounter Jim Dine, Keith Richards, William Burroughs, Patrick Caulfield, Paul McCartney, Tony Curtis or the flamboyant Fulham footballer Bobby Keetch. Like his antecedent Beau Brummell, he became a living work of art, the core of a social world, providing inspiration for most who crossed his path, and leaving barely a trace. He is best remembered now as the person handcuffed to Mick Jagger, on their way to Wormwood Scrubs in 1967 after the infamous Redlands drugs bust, in Richard Hamilton’s series of prints Swingeing London. This image is one of the few frozen moments in Fraser’s life. Not surprisingly, a detail of it provides the cover for Harriet Vyner’s engrossing biography, now back in print and updated.
Related: Blown up – how cinema captured the dark heart of the swinging 60s
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