Swingeing London: A Trip Back Into The 1960s

Swingeing London: A Trip Back into the 1960s with Harriet Vyner, Keiron Pim and John Pearse + a screening of legendary cult swinging London classic, Moviemakers.

Described by Paul McCartney as one of the most influential people of the London Sixties scene', Robert Fraser was a hedonistic modern art dealer who introduced London to Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton to The Beatles and went to jail following the infamous Redlands drugs bust.

Trend-setter, heroin addict and promiscuous homosexual, the highs and lows of his extraordinary life have been charted by his close friend Harriet Vyner, in her peerles, and recently updated, biography Groovy Bob.

Keiron Pim's highly acclaimed book Jumpin' Jack Flash provides a portrait of one of the murkier but no less charismatic figures of that age: David Litvinoff.

Flitting between the worlds of music, art and crime, Litvinoff was a hinge between the underworld of the Kray twins and the playgrounds of the rockerati and accordingly employed as a 'dialogue adviser' on Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's classic film Performance.

With Nigel Weymouth and Sheila Cohen, John Pearse opened the renowned King's Road boutique Granny Takes a Trip in 1966. Four years later he directed his first feature film, Moviemakers, having been told by Fellini he'd 'make a great movie director.'

A murder mystery and 'requiem for the KIng's Road', this Warholian-inflected masterpiece all but disappeared after its inital release in 1971 and remains one of the period's most rarely screened cinematic gems.

Join Vyner, Pim and Pearse, then, in an evening of discussions, readings and screenings, as they lead us on a trip back to a time of unprecedented and radical developments in pop, fashion and art. An era when crooks socialised with aristocrats, the Rolling Stones rubbed shoulders with Old Etonians, Soho was a go go, and Chelsea remained the fashion epicentre of the western world.

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Dragnet is the brainchild of the writers Cathi Unsworth, Travis Elborough and Syd Moore. A series of multifarious events that move from the Essex shore to the city and back again, proudly trawling the open waters of art, film, pop culure, music and noirish literature.