The first time Alexander Masters met Stuart Shorter, he was crouched in a doorway next to the discount picture-framing shop round the corner from Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge: as it happens, the framing shop I used to work for as a sandwich boarder in my teens. Every Saturday the shop owner would hand me a board and a stack of leaflets and I'd hurry down to Christ's Pieces, a public green in town which was also, I now know, Stuart's home. I would dump the leaflets in the bin, sit on my board, and spend the rest of the day with my friends and the squatters and addicts who used to gather there in groups with bikes and dogs and radios.

LRB 19 May 2005 | PDF Download