On the whole, he disliked the Londoners, finding them grey, seedy, and mousy; among the whites he was in Orwell territory, a colourless desert of little clerks. But he spent most of his evenings in the jazz cellars and coffee-shops frequented by Negroes, and there he found the vitality he craved: a relaxed, hipster sensuality, totally unaffected, energetic: a tough little enclave of life into which he could move without strain. And the black men were good to draw. 'If you draw a negro, especially a West African man, you never catch him posing. Everything they do is natural, not like most white models.'¹

1. Hughes, R., Donald Friend, Edwards and Shaw, Sydney, 1965, p. 26