I have a consuming interest in the London counterculture of the late 1960s, and Jim Haynes was a very prominent figure who pops up in innumerable memoirs by oth

I have a consuming interest in the London counterculture of the late 1960s, and Jim Haynes was a very prominent figure who pops up in innumerable memoirs by others. Amazing that he managed to escape being “cancelled” though – his views on free sexual expression were already controversial among the incipient female-liberation side of the counterculture back then, and today would strike many as beyond the pale. I would have liked to meet him, but by the time I learned about his Paris dinners, they seem to have lost their magic and become just a business of sorts. I read that those calling ahead to announce their coming were told by one of his hired staff "The price will be XX€, have it ready in exact change as you enter", and the majority of people one met were tourists coming to the dinners simply because it had popped up on lists of “things to do while in Paris”, and they had little or no knowledge of the man who organized them or the community for which they were originally organized.