Joe North, a handsome American from California, was a fellow author and friend of Owen Quine, Michael Fancourt and Elizabeth Tassel. He, Quine and Fancourt even lived together for a period of time in North’s house on Talgarth Road, which he bequeathed to the other two men upon his death from AIDS thirty years previously. His stupulation was that the house remain an “artists’ refuge.”

Quine and Fancourt worked together to finish the novel, Towards the Mark, that North was unable to complete before he died. The book became a cult classic, but the men had a falling out not long after North’s death. Daniel Chard, on the other hand, harbored a serious crush on North for years.