Counter-culture champion’s archive is being catalogued by the University
The death was announced today of producer, publisher, champion of the counter-culture and renowned Paris dinner party host Jim Haynes, a proud honorary graduate of Edinburgh Napier.
Haynes was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University in June 2018, and planning for an archive of his collection and associated learning events and doctoral research is well under way.
Haynes placed his entire archive of correspondence, personal journals, books, films, recordings, manuscripts, artwork and diaries permanently in the University's special collections in February 2016.
Since then, the university has been actively cataloguing and preserving the prodigious trove of Scottish and international artistic cultural history.
Louisiana-born Haynes made his name in Edinburgh by creating Britain’s first paperback bookshop in the late 1950s and co-producing the 1962 Edinburgh International Writers Conference.
The following year he co-founded the Traverse Theatre Club with John Calder and Richard Demarco where, as artistic director, he established the continuing policy that it would be a theatre for writers and only produce new plays.
The Traverse and Haynes’s efforts contributed to the eventual formation of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, now the largest performing arts festival in the world.
In 1966 Haynes moved to London where he co-founded the International Times alternative newspaper with Barry Miles and John Hopkins. The following year he set up the Drury Lane Arts Lab, which hosted familiar faces such as David Bowie, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and spawned a new generation of artists, filmmakers, writers and directors.
After relocating to Paris in 1969, Haynes taught media studies and sexual politics at the University of Paris for 30 years, and found more fame with his open house Sunday dinners, which featured in an international TV advert for After Eight mints. As publisher with his Handshake Editions imprint, he brought forth work by authors such as Beat Poet Ted Joans and John Calder among others.
Haynes had been due to be honoured earlier by the university but was unable to travel to Edinburgh due to ill health, so he received his Honorary Doctorate of Arts in 2018 at a special one-off ceremony at the Craiglockhart campus.
He said at the time: “I am deeply honoured to be recognised by Edinburgh Napier, and hope to make a positive contribution to students’ experience, the life of the university and my beloved city of Edinburgh in the years to come.”
His death at the age of 87 was announced today by his good friend Martin Belk, who described him as an ‘Edinburgh legend’, adding: "Edinburgh Napier is committed to preserving and making the enormous legacy of Jim Haynes available to all in the way he lived; with an open door, a hug, smile and a 'Thanks for Coming'."