A TALE OF TWO CITIES AND ONE MADHOUSE : The 1960s Photographer's Tale

Michael Lawrence is the award-winning author of a great many books, stories and educational texts for young people. Books of his have been translated into over 20 languages. However, long before all this he was a young photographer in London, taking pictures for The Financial Times, advertising agencies, publishers, pop music promoters and so on - until one December day he decided that he'd had enough of the so-called Swinging Sixties and went to Paris to try his hand at writing while starving. He turned out to have a real gift for the second of these. 'A Tale of Two Cities and One Madhouse' is a personal account of his doings and dealings in London, Paris and one other, very different place. In the book he photographs John Lennon's nose, prints hundreds of soft porn pictures taken by Bob Guccione on the cusp of launching Penthouse Magazine, is introduced to Coco Chanel on a fashion catwalk, sleeps in a famous pop singer's bath, and spends a number of nights as a down-and-out on the streets of Paris wondering where the hell his next meal's going to come from. But some quite interesting things happen as well.