Perhaps you can picture the work of Roald Dahl without the illustrations of Quentin Blake, or of Charles Dickens without the cartoons of Phiz. In a part of my mind, when reading Anthony Powell, I retain the images of the characters furnished by the imperishable Mark Boxer. Would we really have appreciated Alice in Wonderland without the drawings of Tenniel? However these questions may be decided, it is a certainty that the noir contribution of Ralph Steadman (who also produced a brilliantly illustrated Alice Through the Looking Glass) is as inseparable from the output of Hunter S Thompson as Marks from Spencer, or Engels from Marx.
This is not to say that the two men were exactly made for each other. Starting with their first joint assignment, which was to lampoon the Kentucky Derby for Scanlan’s magazine in 1970, Steadman was made to appreciate that he was yoked to a volatile and often dangerous manic-depressive. To describe the subsequent partnership as addictive would be disconcertingly accurate, although “disconcerting” would be the weakest way of expressing Steadman’s alarm at the properties of a small yellow pill that his friend so thoughtfully gave him on a later bad trip — if you will excuse the expression — to the America’s Cup in Rhode Island. The ensuing near-death experience is described without either rancour or self-pity, and, indeed, Steadman cannot claim not to have been warned.