I remember feeling astonished when, in 1991, Francis Bacon invited me to enter his studio. It was, after all, an intensely private place, and this secretive man preferred to work there undisturbed. Martin Harrison, whose keen-eyed research into the contents of the artist’s lair has now resulted in the arresting Francis Bacon: Incunabula, declares that “only Bacon’s closest friends were allowed into his Reece Mews studio.” I was no more than an acquaintance, who had interviewed him on two occasions before. So I never expected him to take me there and allow me to gaze at the extraordinary