David Litvinoff fell down a 1960's rabbit hole

The 1960's were a mixed bag. If you lived in London it was all about mixing. If you lived elsewhere it was just the 1950's with a new number in it.

Which is why the story of David Litvinoff is so fascinating. He mixed, he mixed up people as well, then went down a rabbit hole.

1960's aristocratic socialite Suna Portman summed David up best and her words are the key to Litvinoff...'He seemed to know all of us rather better than we knew him,’ very wise words.

Born in Whitechapel, London, in 1928 to a Jewish family of Russian origin  David was into his twenties when he began frequenting the new jazz clubs in the west end of London. This is where the rabbit hole formed.

At this time the first seeds of the 'swinging sixties' were being sown as an unholy alliance took form in a reverse polarity. East End villains took to the West End more than before and found themselves accepted rather than shunned. A mutual admiration society flourished which reached it's hieght when the Kray twins moved uptown and mingled.

David was, in many cases the key, he flitted, he flirted, he told those he flitted and flirted with all they needed to know and nothing about David except that he was the key to the mystery. So secretive was he that very few photographs of him exist, which is why there are none in this post.

David mixed with Lucien Freud, George Melly and other Soho regulars, back in the East End it was the Krays again, both sides looked to David for introductions to the other and he kept the balance.

David's highest high came when he was a 'dialogue coach and technical director' on the ultimate British film describing the 1960's, Nicholas Roeg's 1968 'Performance' starring Mick Jagger.

Now David was walking a tightrope in the darkness of a rabbit hole.

On one side the socially powerful, on the other the violently powerful. A dangerous tightrope.

David jumped off the tightrope and into a new rabbit hole when he moved to Wales in 1968 then Australia then, in 1972, back again to the UK to Davington Priory in Faversham, Kent, a big house owned by his old friend Christopher Gibbs.

David died in April 1975 from an overdose of sleeping pills.

Author Keiron Pim has, with diligent and dogged research, managed to find enough about the mercurial, secretive David Litvinoff to write a fascinating biography of a lost character of the 1960's of who Iain Sinclair said it was 'hard to find hard to find anyone who remembered Litvinoff as the cost of joining that club was "burn-out, premature senility or suicide."

 Bravo Keiron for a great read...as usual take the ISBN 9780099584445 to your local bookshop for a great read...in stock at my local bookshop!

Another rabbit hole soon...