The novelist Margaret Drabble has written about being painted by Alex, and has also written the foreword to the Museum of Somerset retrospective catalogue.

She and her husband the biographer Michael Holroyd were good friends of Alex and Geraldine and lived for a time at Nettlecombe in the 1980's.

Her daughter Rebecca (1964-2017) was a poet and writer who worked as an editor at Virago Books, then went on to found TLC, the highly respected organisation which continues to support new writers in getting their work published.

A sister portrait of Margaret and Michael, has been donated by Margaret to Sheffield Museums, in her home town.

This portrait was commissioned by the sitter's mother but never finished or delivered for an unknown reason. The subject's parents were very good friends of Alex and Geraldine. Her father Maurice Hardman was the much-loved local GP, who was known to reach outlying farms on his old wooden skiis. Her mother Philippa (née Woolf) was a highly respected NHS psychiatrist in the Somerset, and a very close friend of Geraldine's. She called her two ponies Phoebe and Psyche.

A print commissioned by Bernard Jacobson as part of the portfolio ‘For John Constable’,  launched at the Tate Gallery, London. The other artists invited to make a print or a photograph were Patrick Caulfield, John Hoyland, Anthony Gross, Howard Hodgkin, Bill Brandt, Michael Sandle, Barry Flanagan, Duncan Grant, Richard Smith, William Tillyer, David Hockney, Ivor Abrahams, Peter Blake, Norman Stevens, Robyn Denny, Ivon Hitchens, Margaret Priest, Terence Millington.

Jacobson told Alex’s daughter Rebecca in an interview in June 2023 that his aim with the portfolio was to get back to nature. Bernard described the print as ‘very well received’, which it remains today.  As Alex had recently moved from London to West Somerset in 1973 getting back to nature was very much on his mind too, and he portrayed the identifiable artist friends dancing in front of a ‘haywain’ at Home Farm, Nettlecombe. 

Bernard Jacobson said that Alex - ‘such a loveable guy’ - was a good friend, and exactly the kind of authentic artist and person he would like to be working with today. 

Hollweg family - Alex, Geraldine, Rebecca and Lucas

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The picture celebrates Michael Heseltine's passion for gardening and is similar to other portraits, where the subject appears in a setting relating to their interests. Over a period in the 1990's Michael Heseltine's wife Anne commissioned and bought work from Alex. She appears in the background.

This portrait will soon hang in the new visitor centre at Thenford Aboretum, Oxfordshire, the Heseltine open gardens.

Composer Michael Nyman lived briefly at Nettlecombe, and he and his wife Aet are good Hollweg family friends. 

Alex had several exhibitions with Galleria Tino Ghelfi in Vicenza and loved travelling to Italy. He developed a long working relationship and friendship with Tino and his wife Mirella and they visited Nettlecombe with their children. He said that the time spent in Vicenza working on his shows was some of the happiest of his career.