He was the younger brother of Ruth Fainlight (b 1931), also a poet, who edited a posthumous volume of his work, Selected Poems, published in 1986.
During his sojourn there, Ginsberg called him, "the most gifted English poet of his generation", and Fainlight contributed to Fuck You, a radical arts magazine published by Ed Sanders.
His American work included a poem, "Mescaline Notes" and a disturbing epic about a bad LSD trip, "The Spider".
Fainlight returned to London in the spring of 1965; there, small imprint, Turret Books, issued the only volume published in England in his lifetime, Sussicran, a slim 12-page pamphlet.
When Ginsberg visited London in June 1965 he gave a reading at Better Books in Charing Cross Road which proved extremely popular.
The shop's manager Barry Miles suggested a larger event, incorporating fellow beat writers Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso who were due in the city.
It was, says Miles – in Stephen Gammond’s film, A Technicolour Dream (2008) – "like a poetry rave," the first sign of many like-minds being interested in "underground' art.
Tales From The Embassy, a trilogy of stories by Dave Tomlin (another guiding spirit behind IT) features Fainlight as poet Harry Flame.
He was carried in a coffin on a 'rebirth journey' from the Cenotaph in Whitehall to Notting Hill Gate (including a ride on the Circle Line), where the procession wound through Portobello Market and IT (Fainlight) was symbolically resurrected at the Tavistock Road junction.
Niall McDevitt believes that the full range of Fainlight's writing needs to be collected – preferably in a single volume paperback – so that readers can properly understand his uniqueness.
"That he was a lyric poet with an original gift makes his short unfinished oeuvre important, but that he was also voicing his experiences of Jewishness, homosexuality, drug-taking and mental illness guarantees him a future readership in many quarters."