London kills me

In The White Review, Heathcote Williams on William Burroughs’ London years.

I think Bill found London bleak. He once said with cold sarcasm at UK Customs on being asked for his reason for visiting Britain: ‘Number one: the food. Number two: the weather.’ And he remarked scathingly to a friend, Martin Wilkinson, ‘You think your country’s problems are going to be solved by your moth-eaten Queen?’ It was true though that he was no great fan of his own country either – ‘You stupid, vulgar, greedy, ugly American death sucker’ being a favoured misanthropic imprecation directed at his unfortunate compatriots – but nonetheless, despite a seeming indifference to the UK he stayed on in London for quite some while after Dr. Dent’s cure primarily, I think, because he was getting published here: first of all quite humbly in the hand-duplicated pages of Jeff Nuttall’s My Own Mag; then, with some regularity, in the earliest issues of International Times; and in Mayfair magazine, a kind of English Playboy, which ran a series of his articles exposing scientology.

Burroughs then moved to Duke Street in St James’s, Piccadilly, around the corner from Fortnum and Mason, the royal grocers. His collaborator, Brion Gysin, was hoping that their dream machine was going to make their fortune as a drug-free psychedelic that could be marketed by some big corporation. They installed one in Fortnum and Mason for visitors to sample its hypnotic flickering. There were, unfortunately, no takers.