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Art suffers badly in wartime. Whereas books are still read and music played, paintings and sculptures are often removed from galleries and hidden away for safe-keeping. Yet, during the Second World War, amid the destruction caused by the Blitz and while cut off from foreign influence, certain artists revived native traditions and gained confidence from the notion of an English vision. John Piper, formerly at the forefront of the avant-garde, suddenly cold-shouldered the anonymous surfaces of International Modernism and gave his attention to location, memory, history, identity and belonging, all issues that remain to the fore in today's world. This lecture tracks his journeying from bomb-damaged London to Northumberland, to Windsor and Derbyshire, by means of his pictures and his writings, including his seminal articles for the Architectural Review. 

Frances Spalding is Professor of Art History at Newcastle University. She has written extensively on twentieth-century British art in books, exhibition catalogues, magazine articles and reviews. She is also a biographer and has written lives of Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, John Minton, Duncan Grant, the poet Stevie Smith and of Charles Darwin's grand-daughter Gwen Raverat. This lecture is timed to coincide with the publication of her new book, John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art.