The ancient port of Tangier is described by its partisans as the White Dove on the Shoulder of Africa: white cuboid buildings tumble down the slopes around a horseshoe-shaped bay.

More a predatory gull, perhaps, as it can drop a nasty mess on outsiders. Just ask Toshi, a 19-year-old backpacker from Osaka – or Samuel Pepys, the great English diarist. Pepys, who castigated Tangiers as a den of iniquity, tried to straighten out the books during a brief and unprofitable interlude of British occupation in the seventeenth century.

In the twentieth century, Tangier became a laissez-faire international city with a powerful allure for the rebellious Beat generation, lured like moths from 1950s America. William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Paul Bowles all lived and worked here.

These images have been scanned from the original 35mm Fujichrome or Ektachrome transparencies, so the quality is variable.