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Guest Has Gone

Eyewear has several reasons to mourn the recent death of the long-lived and legendary film-maker, Val Guest.

Firstly, he was born in Maida Vale, where I now live; secondly, he directed two of the key films of the 50s, which in some ways, big and small, have shaped my own cultural projects - Expresso Bongo and The Qautermass Xperiment.

The former of these films is still the best evocation of a hep-cat bongos-coffee-and-sex demi-monde in London, that real-life cats like Colin Wilson (labelled as an Angry Young Man) inhabited; the latter was the inspiration for one of the poems of mine which introduces my latest anthology, Future Welcome (DC Books, 2005), itself a sort of B-movie, except for poetry and sci-fi prose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Guest

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