†

There can be little doubt that when the story comes to be written it will be as far removed from the truth as has been the reporting in newspapers and commentary on social media. The intelligent observer will appreciate that nothing is as cut and dried, black and white, and straightforward as those who pigeon-hole everything would have it. There was much said by both parties which was heated and harsh, but that was largely for public consumption because of the circumstances. The flames grew ever more intense with each journalist and interloper gleefully pouring fuel on the feud. We were a product of our time when unfettered expressionism was the accepted prerogative of the young. Hence we metaphorically and quite literally drew swords in a duel that persisted for half a century.

Those who let down David Farrant most were those who claimed to be his friends, while his real and possibly only friend, described by the exploiters as his arch-rival, was someone considered his foe. The scenario took on a life of its own; especially after we lost contact. Even so, I had more years of contact with him than his own offspring who ignored his father for four decades before seeking him out. I believe we had every chance of resolving matters prior to the imprisonment in 1974. There was still a softness in our relationship that was fertile enough despite the public statements. Behind closed doors it was very different. I remember a mutual friend, Pamela Wright, cooking vegetarian meals with plenty of garlic for the three of us. She was not anyone's girlfriend; just a truly beautiful person.

Once I had learned of David Farrant's arrest the following year, I repaired to Kentish Town police station to discover the charges, if any, and to see if I could help him. The police refused to tell me anything. When he was jailed for almost five years, he managed to contact me by writing to a mutual friend who was occasionally present in the public gallery at the Old Bailey. Elspeth Nolan gave me his correspondence, which he posted from prison to her address, and I replied, at his insistence, using the pseudonym, curiously enough, "George." I have kept his prison correspondence from those years when he was in jail. It would certainly leave nobody in doubt that we shared a warmth uncommon in close friends, never mind sworn enemies. Yet he wanted none of this to become public knowledge.

When he was finally released, the warmth in our relationship slowly evaporated. He became colder.

That notwithstanding, when I came to write the first edition of The Highgate Vampire, as someone who knew him reasonably well, I opined that he was innocent of the charges for which he was jailed.

Ironically, a major publishing house was only interested in publishing my book on the proviso that I expurgate all reference to David Farrant, as it would otherwise probably not get past their legal department. I felt to do so would have been an abrogation of my duty to tell the whole story, and the edition was thence published by the British Occult Society of Pond Square, Highgate, London N6.

He married a young woman, having divorced his first wife Mary whilst still imprisoned. This was quite soon after his release. Colette Gee, who always offered her name as Colette Sully, did not provide a benign influence. She could be unstable and violent. No trust whatsoever survived between the man who dwelt in a coal bunker in a communal cellar beneath private flats in Priestwood Mansions, Archway Road - when we first became acquainted - and the person, since his release on parole, residing at the top of a rambling Victorian house in Muswell Hill Road, facing Highgate Wood, once the scene of devilry, death and duels. It was also the place where we spoke for the final time in 1987.

We drifted so far apart that I ceased to recognise the man I had known privately. He had become a projection of himself, boosted and amplified by others, some of whom bought into the mythical, illusory public image via smoke and mirrors. He was now on the cusp of becoming a hologram.

Yet I remembered the real person; the person I had known in the beginning. Before the circus came to town. Joining that jamboree, he was relegated to little more than a clown. I nevertheless believe the soft spot we each had for the other, not evinced in his latter-day cronies, survived to the very end.

I knew he was dying. I felt it. That is why, in 2018, I began contacting people thought to be close to him. This continued into 2019. I was told he was absolutely fine. I knew deep within that he was not. 

In the unlikely event of a film being made of our half century of dramas, I am fairly confident that poetic licence would be taken with the final scene where my visiting David Farrant on his deathbed at a nursing home in an insalubrious borough of London would be included. But, like the 1954 film Beau Brummell, where the ending has a deathbed reconciliation between a dying Brummell and George IV, it did not happen in real life. If only just one of David Farrant's so-called "friends" had told me ...

— †Seán Manchester