Voici le début.
"Can I start by asking how and when you first met Jim Ballard?
I think it was in E. J. Carnell’s office in Grape Street. Jimmy was working for one of the other MacLaren magazines (publisher of New Worlds, which Carnell then edited) — Chemistry and Industry, I think. We had a nodding acquaintance for a while. Then John Brunner and I (this would have been about 1960) decided to call a conference of SF writers, with a view to starting some kind of association. The meeting was very disappointing to me, Barry Bayley and Jimmy. We’d hoped to hear some stimulating stuff about, as it were, a new literature for the space age. Instead all these guys were interested in was ‘how to break into new markets — how to sell to TV’ and so on. United in our disappointment, we started meeting regularly once or twice a week, mostly at the White Swan in Knightsbridge, near where Jimmy was working. After I was married, we became even closer, seeing Jimmy, Mary and their kids pretty regularly. We all got on very well."
This photo is believed to have been taken in 1968 at the Brighton Arts Festival. From the left, Moorcock, Brian Aldiss, Mike Kustow (director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London), Ballard (photo courtesy Michael Moorcock).