‘Martin Roots, c. 1959, The man from Dorset’, (2012), oil on canvas, 80 x 120 cm.  2012

Martin Roots (b Poole, 1938) was a tall, handsome man with a deep voice and hooded eyes who came from the southern county of Dorset. He was a fellow art student at Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1950s, a friend and the best man at my wedding. He introduced me to the writer Thomas Hardy and the novel Jude the Obscure. Martin was an aesthete - he enjoyed good food, wine, women, ...