Peter Lacy Bacon first met Peter Lacy in 1952. They saw each other at the Colony Room and Bacon described their first encounter as a case of irresistible animal attraction. The result was an exhausting love-hate relationship that continued right up to Lacy's death Tangiers in 1962. The news of Lacy's death reached Bacon on the evening before his 1962 retrospective in the Tate Gallery. (Ten years later, Bacon was to receive the news of George Dyer's death in exactly the same way.) Bacon was later to describe his relationship with Lacy as "four years of continuous horror". According to Bacon, Lacy was neurotic and hysterical and liable to destroy everything (even Bacon's paintings) in his attacks of rage. Even so, Bacon was obsessed by Lacy - he could not live with him, but nor could he do without him.