Daniel James Negley Farson was an American photographer, broadcaster and author. Farson’s jack-of-all-trades style provided him jobs as a journalist, photographer, pub owner, and author but he was also one of Britain’s favorite television interviewers.
Background
Daniel Farson was born on January 8, 1927, in Kensington, London, United Kingdom. His father Negley Farson was a journalist. With his father, Farson travelled the world as a youth. His childhood was divided between Britain and North America.
Education
Farson attended the Wellington College, the School of Slavonic and East European Studies and the Pembroke College, Cambridge, from where he earned his degree.
Career
At age seventeen Farson became the youngest lobby correspondent to the House of Commons for the Central Press Agency but his celebrity was cut short when he was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1947, due to his dual citizenship, where he served as a corps writer. While at Pembroke College, he launched the magazine Panorama. He then accepted a staff photographer job at Picture Post, where he met such figures as Noel Coward, Graham Greene, Brendan Behan, Robert Graves, and Salvador Dali. Farson made his home with London’s bohemian fringe in Soho and London’s East End and was a close associate of painter Francis Bacon. He would later write a biography of Bacon in 1993 titled The Gilded Gutter Life.
After a stint in the Merchant Navy, Farson got a lucky break upon returning to England in 1956 and became an interviewer on the current affairs program This Week. The public liked his no-holds barred approach and he soon created other television documentaries such as People in Trouble, Out of Step, Farson’s Guide to the British, Dan Farson Meets and Time Gentleman Please!, which was a look at London’s East End entertainment scene.
Farson opened the Waterman’s Arms pub in 1962 which gave him contact with notables such as Orson Welles, William Burroughs, Tennessee Williams, Clint Eastwood, Judy Garland, and the Kray Twins, among others. He gave up television and the pub to write in 1966 and published the nonfiction book Jack the Ripper in 1972. His other writings include Marie Lloyd and Music Hall (1972), the autobiography Out of Step (1972), a biography of his great-uncle Bram Stoker titled The Man Who Wrote Dracula (1975), Vampires, Zombies and Monster Men (1975), The Dan Farson Black and White Picture Show (1976), A Window on the Sea (1977), The Hamlyn Book of Horror (1979), The Dog Who Knew Too Much (under the pseudonym Matilda Excellent, 1979), Curse (1980), Transplant (1980), Henry: An Appreciation of Henry Williamson (1982), The Hamlyn Book of Monsters (1984), A Traveller in Turkey (1985), Swansdowne (1986), and Never a Normal Man (1997), another autobiography.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, Farson published several photographic books, went back to television as an interviewer for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), wrote profiles for the Sunday Times, became a food writer for the Sun, and was television critic and arts correspondent for the Mail on Sunday. His photographic and illustrated publications during that time include Soho in the Fifties (1987), Sacred Monsters (1988), Escapades (1989), Gallery (1990), Limehouse Days (1991), and With Gilbert and George in Moscow (1991).