By Elizabeth Sanderson A mews house in South Kensington, 1963. George Dyer, a petty criminal from the East End of London, drops through the skylight and into a room filled with vast canvases and half completed pictures of naked men and screaming popes. Paint pots and piles of paper scraps carpet the floor. The walls, a makeshift palette, are daubed with gashes of colour – shocking red, pale pink, livid blue. It is the dead of night. A man emerges from the doorway. ‘You’ve got two choices,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘I can call the police or you can come to bed with me.’ It is Francis Bacon.
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Francis Bacon had an infamous affair with burglar George Dyer
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Pair met as Dyer attempted to rob the artist's home in 1963
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During relationship Dyer would become Bacon's greatest muse
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Dyer committed suicide aged 36 on eve of Bacon exhibition opening
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Portrait Of George Dyer Talking expected to fetch £40milllion at auction
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