He was astonishingly welcoming to people who knew very little. You know, one might have felt that because he was so steeped and at that point of course he had been living with this material and living in that world for forty years in different ways, you might have thought that his... that he would have been slightly aloof or distant, in fact, quite the opposite. He continued to be, all the time I knew him, formidably curious about art but also about your reactions to art. I remember him standing in front of a Gaudier-Brzeska drawing, asking me what I felt about it and so on. At that time, very early on, he was even lending things to people to take back to their rooms. I can remember buying... not buying, borrowing... a Gaudier drawing. That stopped, more or less the time when the thing became more professional, more or less the time I was there, but I think I did manage to borrow one thing for a short period. But it was that kind of willingness to bring you into his orbit and to listen to what you had to say even though he had probably heard those kinds of reactions many, many times. It was about sharing, really, I think that that was the extraordinary thing about Kettle's Yard overall. You had this sense of going... obviously you were going into someone's house and it was a privilege and you were aware of that but he made you feel very welcome.

When somebody told me one day, 'Oh, you should go to Kettle's Yard' and I said, 'Well, what's that?' and they said 'Oh, it's run by this marvellous character called Jim Ede who is just incredibly welcoming to students and has the most marvellous collection of modern art', so I lost very little time in going round there. To discover something like Kettle's Yard on my doorstep was magical actually. I'll never forget going around there the first time and ringing this ancient doorbell and then this, kind of, slender figure appeared. He opened the door himself and just the most warm welcome, just wonderful. It wasn't like the University at all. He wasn't like some sort of terribly serious-minded academic. He was much more free and easy than that. Much more like a friend immediately. Incredibly open and hospitable and very enthusiastic as well.

I stayed with him in his flat in Jordan Lane. I spent three days with him, I think, there, so I spent this time with Jim and basically he's telling me about the history of Kettle's Yard and history of himself and his relationships with the artists. As it turned out, it was all the stories that everybody knew anyway and which he published and, etc, etc, but it was nice to spend time with him. Very important, I think, to see how he lived. Effectively, he'd set up a little, mini Kettle's Yard in Edinburgh, although the quality of the artwork wasn't the same but it was, you know, his spartan way of life. I can remember him saying when I was washing up the dishes after dinner, and dinner was a very light meal I have to say, it was grated carrot and I can't remember what else, but it was like an hors d'oeuvre for most people. I remember washing up, he said, 'well, I only use hot water, I don't use washing up liquid because it's a waste of money' and you would literally just wash the things under the hot tap and dry them up and that was it. He was very much in control of his faculties still, very alert, a dapper man, always well turned out. I can remember that between 2pm and 4pm, I had to go out because between 2pm and 4pm he would visit St Columbus Hospice to visit the terminal patients. He would talk to me about that too, about actually how a lot of them didn't want to see him for quite a long time and then, I think, gradually, he managed to integrate himself into that community. So the 2pm to 4pm ritual of Kettle's Yard was maintained in the visits to St Columbus Hospice.

I remember how agitated he was when I used to see him in Edinburgh much later, about the way that the press were not producing his book quite right and some photograph wasn't quite in the right... and I had a certain sympathy for the poor people who were doing it because he was demanding in that kind of way but it was a demanding in the service of an ideal, not just because he wanted to, anything for himself. He didn't strike one as a self-advocate or developing person in any way really like that. As I say, sometimes these little, tiny, childish vanities about some recognition of what he had done being secured but they were peripheral to his real passion to create something and open other people's eyes and imaginations to it. I'm sure that's so, certainly that's what I experienced in him.