Never before published photographs of David Bowie have been revealed in a new book which gives an intimate insight of the time he spent in Beckenham just before his career took off.

Mary Finnigan’s Psychedelic Suburbia – David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab presents new insight into the period in 1969 when the pop icon lived, worked and played with the author.

Its publication on January 8 coincides with Bowie’s 69th birthday and the release of his new album Blackstar.

The book is a personal account of a time from when the singer – born in Brixton but raised in Bromley from the age of 11 – was a struggling folk singer looking for gigs up to the point his Ziggy Stardust sent his career skyrocketing.

Finnigan took Bowie and supported him financially as they became lovers and founded a successful folk club which became the iconic Beckenham Arts Lab at The Three Tuns pun (now Zizzi) in Beckenham High Street.

In August 1969, Bowie, Finnigan and Arts Lab members stages the UK’s first Free Festival in Croydon Road Recreation Ground in Beckenham. Bowie immortalised the event with his song Memory of a Free Festival. Around the same time, he started to climb the charts with his single Space Oddity.

Thanks to the publishers of Psychedlic Suburbia, News Shopper is able to share some pictures from the book.

Psychedelic Suburbia costs £14.95 and is published by Jorvik Press.

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Beckenham High Street, 1965

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Bowie on stage at the Three Tuns at an Arts Lab Sunday

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Early handwritten lyrics to Oh! You Pretty Things, written in  Mary Finnigan’s notebook

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Bowie and friends at street theatre rehearsals in Beckenham Place Park

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David and Angie Bowie after their wedding at Bromley Register Office in 1970

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Bowie on stage at the Free Festival in 1969