0:00:11 > 0:00:13A late summer's day, in 1918,
0:00:13 > 0:00:18and a painter, fatigued from four years on the Western front,
0:00:18 > 0:00:21was making his way through this forest.
0:00:22 > 0:00:30His name was John Nash and he was searching for inspiration.
0:00:33 > 0:00:37As the sun began to set, he finally found what he was looking for...
0:00:39 > 0:00:46..a vast golden cornfield shimmering in the evening breeze.
0:01:00 > 0:01:05But for Nash this wasn't just a cornfield...
0:01:05 > 0:01:08this was England,
0:01:08 > 0:01:12beautiful, bountiful England -
0:01:12 > 0:01:17the England he'd fought so hard to protect,
0:01:17 > 0:01:20but even as he painted,
0:01:20 > 0:01:25he feared this vision of his country would disappear forever.
0:01:27 > 0:01:28Britain had just emerged
0:01:28 > 0:01:32from four gruelling years of war and while it had been victorious,
0:01:32 > 0:01:36it had in the process lost all of its old certainties.
0:01:36 > 0:01:41Everyone seemed to be experiencing an unprecedented crisis of identity.
0:01:41 > 0:01:44But in this uncertain and anxious age,
0:01:44 > 0:01:50it was the artists who would help Britain to find itself again.
0:01:50 > 0:01:53It's my belief that the 20th century
0:01:53 > 0:01:59was a golden age of British painting, unsurpassed before or since.
0:02:00 > 0:02:04And between the wars, when the character of the nation was under threat,
0:02:04 > 0:02:08it was our painters who showed us what Englishness was
0:02:08 > 0:02:11and where it could be found.
0:02:13 > 0:02:18Some retreated to nostalgic fantasies...
0:02:19 > 0:02:23..while others confronted the harsh realities of their own times.
0:02:25 > 0:02:30Some voyaged deep into the mystical English landscape,
0:02:30 > 0:02:34but in the darkest hour of the Second World War,
0:02:34 > 0:02:40they came together to forge an image of a nation we could all recognise,
0:02:40 > 0:02:44believe in and fight for -
0:02:44 > 0:02:49an image that still shapes the way we see ourselves today.
0:03:05 > 0:03:09RADIO: It is our privilege to give you this opportunity
0:03:09 > 0:03:12of listening to the Right Honourable Stanley Baldwin MP.
0:03:14 > 0:03:22I have been asked by the BBC to say something about the English character
0:03:22 > 0:03:29and I gladly agreed to do this because I think it is a good thing at a time like the present
0:03:29 > 0:03:36to take stock, as it were, of our national characteristics and generally to investigate
0:03:36 > 0:03:41where it is that we derive what we call our English character,
0:03:41 > 0:03:46and how it is fitted to help us in the struggle that lies before us.
0:03:48 > 0:03:54In the years after the Great War, a mood of self-doubt hung over the nation.
0:03:56 > 0:04:01A generation of men had been sent to slaughter in the trenches.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04Cracks were beginning to show in the British Empire,
0:04:06 > 0:04:09and the forces of modernity were challenging
0:04:09 > 0:04:12all that was once held as sacred.
0:04:13 > 0:04:20Many started to question what Englishness was, and whether it existed at all.
0:04:22 > 0:04:29But it was Stanley Spencer, one of our greatest painters, who thought he knew the answer.
0:04:32 > 0:04:34CHILD GIGGLES
0:04:40 > 0:04:47Spencer had grown up in Cookham, a quintessentially English village, on the banks of the River Thames.
0:04:49 > 0:04:51He enjoyed nothing more than the annual regatta,
0:04:51 > 0:04:55when the entire village came out on show.
0:05:03 > 0:05:10This was his childhood paradise that insulated him from all the troubles of the outside world.
0:05:14 > 0:05:19But with the Great War, Stanley's paradise would be shattered.
0:05:30 > 0:05:36Stanley was torn away from Cookham, and endured the horrors of war in Macedonia,
0:05:36 > 0:05:40which he would commemorate at his Sandham Memorial Chapel.
0:05:41 > 0:05:48But it was his return home to Cookham that would affect him most deeply.
0:05:50 > 0:05:55Stanley was pretty much the first man to return to Cookham after the war,
0:05:55 > 0:05:58but he was greeted with awful news.
0:05:58 > 0:06:03His younger brother Sidney had been killed on the front over three months earlier
0:06:03 > 0:06:07and Stanley hadn't even received a letter to tell him of the tragedy.
0:06:07 > 0:06:11But it wasn't just this, the whole village seemed to have changed.
0:06:11 > 0:06:14Most of the boys were still away on active service,
0:06:14 > 0:06:19and where once the sound of laughter and gossip filled these streets,
0:06:19 > 0:06:23now, like this morning, there was just silence.
0:06:23 > 0:06:28And I really think that it was at this point that Stanley decided what to do.
0:06:28 > 0:06:33He would turn Cookham back into the paradise it had been when he was a boy.
0:06:36 > 0:06:40He began producing a series of inspired religious paintings
0:06:40 > 0:06:47that transformed the ordinary streets of Cookham into the sites of miraculous biblical events.
0:06:49 > 0:06:54In Stanley's mind, Christ takes a detour down Cookham High Street
0:06:54 > 0:06:56on his triumphal return to Jerusalem.
0:06:59 > 0:07:02The local brewery hosts the Last Supper...
0:07:07 > 0:07:12..and Jesus carries the cross past Stanley's home.
0:07:20 > 0:07:28But for Stanley the most uplifting of all biblical stories would take place here at Cookham Churchyard.
0:07:32 > 0:07:38Stanley envisaged a great spiritual epic - a painting of life and death,
0:07:38 > 0:07:39and life after death,
0:07:39 > 0:07:44and it was going to be the culmination of his attempt to make Cookham a heaven on earth.
0:07:48 > 0:07:53OLD RECORDING: You see, everything has a sort of double meaning for me,
0:07:53 > 0:07:56there's the ordinary, everyday meaning
0:07:56 > 0:07:59and the imaginary meaning about it all.
0:07:59 > 0:08:03And I wanted to bring these things together
0:08:03 > 0:08:05and in this...
0:08:05 > 0:08:09first big resurrection picture of mine, er...
0:08:09 > 0:08:16one has really rather a good example of that kind of thing.
0:08:16 > 0:08:21I think I'll try and do a sort of personally-conducted tour
0:08:21 > 0:08:23through the picture.
0:08:32 > 0:08:35Stanley Spencer's Cookham Resurrection
0:08:35 > 0:08:39depicts the heroic moment at the end of days
0:08:39 > 0:08:43when all the dead are reborn into paradise.
0:08:45 > 0:08:51But, as always, Stanley effortlessly combines the epic with the everyday,
0:08:51 > 0:08:56so it's not Christ who's being resurrected, but Stanley's friends, family and neighbours.
0:08:56 > 0:09:03And they're not being reborn into a celestial paradise, but Stanley's earthly paradise, his village.
0:09:03 > 0:09:06You can see God in the porch of the church
0:09:06 > 0:09:09with Jesus underneath him holding some babies
0:09:09 > 0:09:13and along this wall you've got, as you have in the Sistine Chapel,
0:09:13 > 0:09:15all the prophets and thinkers.
0:09:15 > 0:09:18Notice that they are all in different positions of thinking.
0:09:18 > 0:09:23For instance, that is very much the position of thought.
0:09:23 > 0:09:26These figures here, these men, have just come out
0:09:26 > 0:09:30of the ground, they're dirty, so their wives are dusting down their jackets
0:09:30 > 0:09:32as if to say, "You're in heaven now, be presentable."
0:09:32 > 0:09:34I was thinking of my father
0:09:34 > 0:09:38and my mother brushing him down before he went to London -
0:09:38 > 0:09:43little, intimate, ordinary, personal happenings.
0:09:43 > 0:09:45Those men lying on the top of the stones I like very much,
0:09:45 > 0:09:48because it gave me the feeling that the resurrection
0:09:48 > 0:09:53was a peaceful occasion and I'm very fond of peace
0:09:53 > 0:09:56and I like the happiness, that's the main idea of this picture.
0:09:56 > 0:10:00And it's all about hope and love and happiness and optimism.
0:10:00 > 0:10:02You don't get paintings like this any more.
0:10:02 > 0:10:05People don't paint pictures like this.
0:10:05 > 0:10:08Happiness and hope and optimism and love aren't fashionable any more.
0:10:08 > 0:10:11But for Stanley that's what art was all about
0:10:11 > 0:10:15and here is Stanley right in the centre, nude, surveying the scene.
0:10:15 > 0:10:19I think that's all I can think about it at the moment.
0:10:19 > 0:10:23But it's actually got another dimension to it as well,
0:10:23 > 0:10:27because there's one character who's depicted not once, not twice,
0:10:27 > 0:10:29but three times in this painting.
0:10:29 > 0:10:32Here going over to the stile in the distance into the water,
0:10:32 > 0:10:35here smelling a sunflower
0:10:35 > 0:10:39and here wrapped in ivy and that is a woman by the name of Hilda Carline.
0:10:39 > 0:10:42And when Stanley first started painting this picture
0:10:42 > 0:10:45he'd just met Hilda and she was to become the love of his life.
0:10:56 > 0:10:59Stanley had met Hilda at a dinner party
0:10:59 > 0:11:03and fell in love with her as she was dishing out the soup.
0:11:03 > 0:11:06After a protracted courtship, the two married in 1925.
0:11:06 > 0:11:12At first, they were deliriously happy and it seemed that Stanley's paradise was complete,
0:11:12 > 0:11:15but we all know there tends to be trouble in paradise.
0:11:18 > 0:11:21Stanley had been married for 12 idyllic years
0:11:21 > 0:11:25when one day there was a new arrival in the village.
0:11:28 > 0:11:34She was a glamorous young artist by the name of Patricia Preece,
0:11:34 > 0:11:38and Stanley could not resist her charms.
0:11:38 > 0:11:45On hearing of his dalliance with Patricia, the village was rife with gossip.
0:11:45 > 0:11:48He liked Patricia.
0:11:48 > 0:11:51She was very elegant then and I think...
0:11:51 > 0:11:54she led him on.
0:11:54 > 0:11:56You know what life is like,
0:11:56 > 0:12:00men are very susceptible to, um...
0:12:01 > 0:12:04..the wiles of women, shall we say?
0:12:05 > 0:12:10I quite liked her. She was tall and thin, when dressed up very elegant
0:12:10 > 0:12:15but if you called - if she opened the door, which wasn't often - she used to look terrible.
0:12:15 > 0:12:19Well, I think they thought that she was a gold-digger
0:12:19 > 0:12:24and just after him because he was a celebrated artist,
0:12:24 > 0:12:26and making a lot of money at the time.
0:12:28 > 0:12:32I think he was bowled over by her glamour,
0:12:32 > 0:12:38because Hilda was a member of a very artistic family, unconventional,
0:12:38 > 0:12:42and, um...I think Patricia was just the opposite.
0:12:42 > 0:12:48She was vey glamorous and I think meant to be rather aristocratic and conventional
0:12:48 > 0:12:51and I think he was attracted by that.
0:12:53 > 0:12:58He was led on by Patricia who we know was a lesbian living with another woman,
0:12:58 > 0:13:02so I think in that way he was naive
0:13:02 > 0:13:06but, um...perhaps wanted the impossible, you know.
0:13:12 > 0:13:18Stanley left Hilda, and four days later married his lover.
0:13:20 > 0:13:25And so began a darker period of his life and work.
0:13:39 > 0:13:40After the marriage,
0:13:40 > 0:13:44Stanley and his new wife were due to go to Cornwall on honeymoon,
0:13:44 > 0:13:45but what actually happened
0:13:45 > 0:13:48was Patricia went ahead early with her girlfriend
0:13:48 > 0:13:51and Stanley stayed behind with his ex-wife.
0:13:51 > 0:13:54It was evidently not an ideal situation,
0:13:54 > 0:13:57and Stanley was so confused and distressed by the situation
0:13:57 > 0:14:01he became physically unable to consummate the marriage.
0:14:01 > 0:14:04And this painting is all about Stanley's impotence.
0:14:04 > 0:14:07Now how many artists would make a picture about their own impotence?
0:14:07 > 0:14:10Picasso only made it about his having enormous virility,
0:14:10 > 0:14:14so you can see this is Stanley confronting this nude woman
0:14:14 > 0:14:18and yet it's so extravagantly flaccid, his penis.
0:14:18 > 0:14:23It's a deeply sexual painting, but I don't think it's at all erotic.
0:14:23 > 0:14:25There are all this clues everywhere
0:14:25 > 0:14:27that there's no sex in this marriage whatsoever.
0:14:27 > 0:14:29The raw meat down here,
0:14:29 > 0:14:32it's uncooked in the same way that the marriage is uncooked.
0:14:32 > 0:14:35The fire in the distance is contrasted
0:14:35 > 0:14:37with the coldness of their flesh.
0:14:37 > 0:14:40It's that sense of only the fire can artificially warm them up
0:14:40 > 0:14:42because they themselves are cold.
0:14:42 > 0:14:44And there's this almost comical fact,
0:14:44 > 0:14:46Stanley is still wearing his spectacles.
0:14:48 > 0:14:51But the cast-iron proof for me that this relationship
0:14:51 > 0:14:55is not quite right is contained in the eyes.
0:14:55 > 0:14:57There's no eye contact at all,
0:14:57 > 0:15:00Stanley is staring covetously, perhaps desperately,
0:15:00 > 0:15:02down at Patricia's breasts
0:15:02 > 0:15:05but she is staring just vacantly into the distance.
0:15:05 > 0:15:11And it's that disconnect, it's that empty, passionless, sexless space
0:15:11 > 0:15:16between husband and wife that tells us this marriage is doomed -
0:15:16 > 0:15:19doomed from the very start.
0:15:20 > 0:15:23I genuinely can't think of a more honest painting
0:15:23 > 0:15:25in the history of art. So much art is about vanity,
0:15:25 > 0:15:29the vanity of the artist, the virility of the artist
0:15:29 > 0:15:33but there's no vanity here, this is about Spencer having no virility.
0:15:33 > 0:15:36There's no glamour, there's no romance and all that's left
0:15:36 > 0:15:45is a devastating essay in failure, in rejection and in loneliness.
0:15:51 > 0:15:54For a British painter at this time,
0:15:54 > 0:15:57Stanley's work was dangerously explicit
0:15:57 > 0:16:00and as their fractious relationship broke down,
0:16:00 > 0:16:03Patricia threatened to use it to discredit him.
0:16:07 > 0:16:10Terrified, he hid it under his bed
0:16:10 > 0:16:14where it remained for the rest of his life.
0:16:16 > 0:16:21The English paradise that Stanley had tried so hard to recreate was lost.
0:16:31 > 0:16:37But across the country, another artist was out hunting for his own piece of England.
0:16:39 > 0:16:43With his cravat, tweeds and stiff upper lip,
0:16:43 > 0:16:47Sir Alfred Munnings is a deeply unfashionable painter these days.
0:16:49 > 0:16:53But in his day he was a colossus of the arts establishment -
0:16:53 > 0:16:55a die-hard traditionalist
0:16:55 > 0:17:00who would fight for his idea of Englishness to the very last.
0:17:04 > 0:17:06Munnings liked the good things in life.
0:17:06 > 0:17:09In fact, for Alfred, only the best was good enough,
0:17:09 > 0:17:12and he too was searching for a post-war paradise
0:17:12 > 0:17:14and he did the journey not by foot or by rail,
0:17:14 > 0:17:19but the from the comfortable back seat of a chauffer-driven motorcar.
0:17:19 > 0:17:22And he did the whole trip with a cigar in one hand
0:17:22 > 0:17:24and a hip flask of whisky in the other.
0:17:24 > 0:17:28Alfred's idea of paradise was very different to Stanley's.
0:17:31 > 0:17:35He was driven directly to the heart of Constable country
0:17:35 > 0:17:38and as he passed through the village of Dedham,
0:17:38 > 0:17:41he pulled over for a spot of liquid lunch.
0:17:52 > 0:17:55He was here actually having a picnic and some drinks
0:17:55 > 0:17:58when he fell instantly in love with this house
0:17:58 > 0:18:01and within just an hour he'd bought it.
0:18:01 > 0:18:07£1,800 for the house, 40 acres, numerous cottages and plenty of staff.
0:18:07 > 0:18:11It was to be his home and his studio for the rest of his life.
0:18:25 > 0:18:29If you want to understand Alfred Munnings, I think all you need to do
0:18:29 > 0:18:32is take a really close look at this painting,
0:18:32 > 0:18:35because what he's done here is distil his entire world view
0:18:35 > 0:18:38into one gloriously sentimental image.
0:18:38 > 0:18:42He's actually painted his four favourite things in the world.
0:18:42 > 0:18:46And I'm going to deal with them in ascending order of preference.
0:18:46 > 0:18:48His fourth favourite thing in the world was his wife.
0:18:48 > 0:18:52I think she may have actually come further down the list than that,
0:18:52 > 0:18:54but that's the subject of another film.
0:18:54 > 0:18:58His third favourite thing in the world was his house here in the background,
0:18:58 > 0:19:02this wonderful building I'm standing in today.
0:19:02 > 0:19:06Alfred's second favourite thing was Alfred himself, and you can see him there,
0:19:06 > 0:19:10looking very proud of himself, holding this very painting in his hands.
0:19:10 > 0:19:13But Alfred's favourite thing of all by far...
0:19:13 > 0:19:14was his horse.
0:19:14 > 0:19:18In fact this is just one of them, he had 34 horses.
0:19:18 > 0:19:26Horses would prove not just his greatest hobby but the secret of his extraordinary professional success.
0:19:33 > 0:19:36He was a bit of a rough diamond, really.
0:19:36 > 0:19:40That's the words I'd use to describe him.
0:19:40 > 0:19:45He would shout and holler and swear, especially if he was doing a painting
0:19:45 > 0:19:47and you didn't sit still or anything like that.
0:19:49 > 0:19:55Well, my first memories as a young child - I was probably seven or eight -
0:19:55 > 0:20:00and I used to come over with my father because my father was looking after the horses.
0:20:02 > 0:20:06Very good relationship. He worked for him for 40 years.
0:20:06 > 0:20:11Sometimes Munnings would ask me to sit on the wooden horse.
0:20:11 > 0:20:15If he wanted to do a sketch, you'd have to sit there for a couple of hours.
0:20:15 > 0:20:19If he was doing a painting, and he needed somebody to sit,
0:20:19 > 0:20:22everything else stopped.
0:20:22 > 0:20:27He loved the races and he liked to go out on the horses.
0:20:27 > 0:20:29He loved Newmarket.
0:20:57 > 0:21:03This is The Gallops at Newmarket. For Alfred Munnings it was pretty much the best place on the planet.
0:21:03 > 0:21:09I've never actually been here before, but I can completely understand where he's coming from.
0:21:09 > 0:21:13This is about seven in the morning, the sun's just come over those trees behind me,
0:21:13 > 0:21:15and there's dew glistening on the grass.
0:21:15 > 0:21:19Everywhere you look there are thousands of extraordinary creatures,
0:21:19 > 0:21:21thundering across the countryside.
0:21:21 > 0:21:24And you can hear the hooves battering on the grass
0:21:24 > 0:21:28and the sounds of breathing and the steam coming off their bodies.
0:21:28 > 0:21:33There are jockeys everywhere, and trainers in the middle observing and commanding.
0:21:33 > 0:21:36It's a completely extraordinary experience.
0:21:36 > 0:21:40And for Alfred, this is what Britishness was really about.
0:21:46 > 0:21:54Alfred became the darling of an aristocracy who longed to relive the decadence of the Edwardian age.
0:21:54 > 0:21:59Equestrian paintings had a special place in the British tradition,
0:21:59 > 0:22:03and he was determined to keep that tradition alive.
0:22:10 > 0:22:16In his paintings of horses, Alfred Munnings captures everything, the play of light on the horse's
0:22:16 > 0:22:20musculature, the grace and power of its movement, and the ever-changing
0:22:20 > 0:22:25quality of light and atmosphere in the English countryside.
0:22:25 > 0:22:30Alfred Munnings is one of the most naturally gifted painters in British history.
0:22:30 > 0:22:34He truly is a modern master.
0:22:34 > 0:22:38Yet he's hidden from our galleries, he's ignored by our universities
0:22:38 > 0:22:41and he's glossed over in our books, and why?
0:22:41 > 0:22:44Simply because of what he painted.
0:22:44 > 0:22:48And that can't be right, surely?
0:22:50 > 0:22:53But in his day Alfred was rewarded with the ultimate honour,
0:22:53 > 0:23:01President of The Royal Academy of Arts.
0:23:01 > 0:23:05At last, he had the perfect platform from which to preserve
0:23:05 > 0:23:10and promote the 'Great British Painting Tradition'.
0:23:10 > 0:23:14But during one banquet, Alfred went a bit too far.
0:23:16 > 0:23:21Alfred had drunk numerous glasses of sherry with his guests before the dinner,
0:23:21 > 0:23:26then he'd taken white wine, followed by red wine with the meal itself.
0:23:26 > 0:23:30He'd then consumed generous quantities of port with his cheese, as you're supposed to do,
0:23:30 > 0:23:36and he finished with several large glasses of Champagne for each of the five toasts.
0:23:36 > 0:23:43So when he finally got up to speak, he was completely and utterly sozzled.
0:23:43 > 0:23:50And he forgot that the BBC was broadcasting his every word, live to the nation.
0:23:51 > 0:23:59'I find myself a President of a body of men who are what I call shilly-shallying.
0:24:02 > 0:24:08'They feel that there is something in this so-called modern art.
0:24:08 > 0:24:12'If you paint a tree,
0:24:12 > 0:24:18'for Lord's sake, try and paint it to look like a tree.
0:24:20 > 0:24:27'And on my left I have Mr Winston Churchill, I know he is beside me,
0:24:27 > 0:24:33'because once he said to me, "Alfred, if you met Picasso coming
0:24:33 > 0:24:39' "down the street, would you join with me in kicking his something-something side!" '
0:24:39 > 0:24:41LAUGHTER
0:24:41 > 0:24:45'I said, "Yes, sir! I would!" '
0:24:47 > 0:24:53Alfred's been hated for that speech for over 60 years.
0:24:53 > 0:24:56It's pretty much all he's been remembered for now actually, and,
0:24:56 > 0:25:03of course, I disagree with everything he said, of course I do, but I respect him for it too.
0:25:03 > 0:25:06I respect him for standing up for what he believed in.
0:25:06 > 0:25:10Alfred believed in a traditional English way of life and
0:25:10 > 0:25:15traditional English art, and he was prepared to fight for it.
0:25:15 > 0:25:20But I think deep down he knew that those traditions, the things that he loved,
0:25:20 > 0:25:25were disappearing though his fingers with every day that passed.
0:25:28 > 0:25:31COMMENTARY: These are the days when some men throw their anger
0:25:31 > 0:25:34'against the contentment of the establishment.
0:25:34 > 0:25:38'And it takes a deal of discontent to make a man walk 300 miles across
0:25:38 > 0:25:42'England to demand his share of progress and prosperity.'
0:25:47 > 0:25:55At the end of 1920s Britain was plunged into political and economic turmoil.
0:25:55 > 0:25:59This was the era of mass unemployment and the General Strike.
0:25:59 > 0:26:01And there was one painter who believed that
0:26:01 > 0:26:07the true spirit of England resided in the working class.
0:26:07 > 0:26:12His name was William Coldstream.
0:26:13 > 0:26:21Coldstream had started his career producing rather pedestrian paintings of the world around him.
0:26:21 > 0:26:25But he soon came to doubt their value in these turbulent times.
0:26:31 > 0:26:35'I became for a moment rather despairing about painting.
0:26:35 > 0:26:39'It seemed to me that one wasn't doing something which
0:26:39 > 0:26:44'could be hooked onto or connected with any very obvious wide public.
0:26:44 > 0:26:48'It seemed to me at the time that perhaps painting wasn't
0:26:48 > 0:26:52'the most appropriate medium for the 20th-century person.'
0:26:57 > 0:27:03Coldstream grew convinced that in a world of modern technology and political upheaval,
0:27:03 > 0:27:09old-fashioned art was elitist, irrelevant and perhaps even immoral.
0:27:09 > 0:27:12So in 1935, he made a bold decision,
0:27:12 > 0:27:20he would give up painting all together and turn instead to the art of the future.
0:27:21 > 0:27:24"This is The Night Mail crossing the border
0:27:24 > 0:27:26"bringing the cheque and the postal order
0:27:26 > 0:27:28"Letters for the rich letters for the poor
0:27:28 > 0:27:31"The shop at the corner and the girl next door
0:27:31 > 0:27:33"Pulling upbeat at a steady climb
0:27:33 > 0:27:35"the gradient's against her but she's on time."
0:27:39 > 0:27:45He joined the pioneering documentary film unit of the General Post Office
0:27:45 > 0:27:49where he collaborated with Benjamin Britten and WH Auden.
0:27:49 > 0:27:54Coldstream's finest contribution was as editor for the film, Coal Face.
0:27:59 > 0:28:02'Coal mining is the basic industry of Britain.
0:28:05 > 0:28:10'The coalmines of the country employ 750,000 men.'
0:28:10 > 0:28:18In its day, it was a dangerously provocative piece on the working conditions in British coalmines.
0:28:18 > 0:28:21'The miner works in a cramped position.
0:28:22 > 0:28:25'Often he has scarcely room to swing his pick.'
0:28:27 > 0:28:34But curiously it was his work in film that would lead him to rediscover painting.
0:28:35 > 0:28:40But it was Wystan Auden who said he ought to start painting again. >
0:28:40 > 0:28:42What go back after the '30s, you mean?
0:28:42 > 0:28:45- Back after GPO film unit.- Yes.
0:28:45 > 0:28:50And he somehow got the courage to go back and then found his direction.
0:29:06 > 0:29:11Coldstream headed North, to the industrial town of Bolton.
0:29:11 > 0:29:17Bolton had grown rich with the enterprising spirit of the Victorian age,
0:29:17 > 0:29:21but by the 20th Century it had fallen on hard times.
0:29:23 > 0:29:28COLDSTREAM: I did feel, I think, that there was something worthwhile about the subject,
0:29:28 > 0:29:32that these were the conditions in which a lot of people lived in this
0:29:32 > 0:29:39town which had this industrial work going on where somehow the live and important things in a general sense.
0:29:42 > 0:29:48He was rather shocked by the conditions of the people... >
0:29:48 > 0:29:54..but he also thought it was a good thing to do in, you know, during the slump and, erm,
0:29:54 > 0:29:56and he thought it was a sort of useful thing to do.
0:30:03 > 0:30:07Deep in the archives of the Bolton Museum are photographs taken by
0:30:07 > 0:30:11Coldstream's friend Humphrey Spender.
0:30:14 > 0:30:18It's this world, this working class world, its pubs and
0:30:18 > 0:30:23its football stadiums and its shops and its chapels, that Coldstream wanted to immerse himself in.
0:30:23 > 0:30:26It's this world that he wanted to make his art about.
0:30:26 > 0:30:31It's these people, the woman walking back from the shops, the man playing darts in the pub,
0:30:31 > 0:30:34the people supporting Bolton Wanderers Football Team,
0:30:34 > 0:30:36it's these people that he wanted to make his art for.
0:30:39 > 0:30:43It was an attempt to understand the ordinary person. >
0:30:43 > 0:30:50He wanted to show ordinary life in its unvarnished sootiness.
0:30:50 > 0:30:52Produce something socially relevant.
0:30:52 > 0:30:59And he was quite brave because he was going against the swim and that was very unfashionable,
0:30:59 > 0:31:02and he had to keep going, and I think that was,
0:31:02 > 0:31:05erm, quite a brave thing to do.
0:31:05 > 0:31:10Coldstream woke at 4.30 every morning for three weeks.
0:31:10 > 0:31:13He climbed to a vantage point high about the town
0:31:13 > 0:31:21and there began work on what was to become the definitive painting of 20th Century Industrial Britain.
0:31:29 > 0:31:33It was up here, as he spent those gruelling wet and windy
0:31:33 > 0:31:38three weeks working on that picture, that Coldstream had a revelation.
0:31:38 > 0:31:42A revelation that seemed to answer all the questions he'd ever had
0:31:42 > 0:31:46and one that would change his art and his life forever.
0:31:46 > 0:31:50As he looked down on the streets and the houses and the factories,
0:31:50 > 0:31:57and the inhabitants of Bolton, he understood at last what the British people actually wanted.
0:31:57 > 0:32:03And they didn't want art, they didn't want beautiful images and elegant fantasies,
0:32:03 > 0:32:08they wanted something far more important, they wanted reality.
0:32:21 > 0:32:26'I was excited by the idea of what would happen if one tried to make
0:32:26 > 0:32:31'an absolutely direct record of one's experience of nature with the fewest
0:32:31 > 0:32:37'number of things coming in-between oneself and it and the least awareness or thought about style.'
0:32:40 > 0:32:45Coldstream now committed himself to making paintings of people and
0:32:45 > 0:32:50places, with greater realism than anyone had ever achieved before.
0:32:54 > 0:33:02And he set about converting a younger generation of ambitious artists to his own realist cause.
0:33:02 > 0:33:08'I remember Bill very well, I mean, I the incredible presence he had for me
0:33:08 > 0:33:12'in that he was always there at The Slade.
0:33:12 > 0:33:14'I remember Bill coming once into a room and asked'
0:33:14 > 0:33:19what I was doing and I said I wanted to make that thing move and I was trying to get the painting work.
0:33:19 > 0:33:22He said, "Do you know, John, I never look at the painting,"
0:33:22 > 0:33:26he said, "I try not to see it, I walk in and look at the model."
0:33:26 > 0:33:29And I thought the man's crazy, I'm making a picture!
0:33:29 > 0:33:33But what he was doing, by being almost mischievous and throwing me,
0:33:33 > 0:33:37was saying, you know, "Forget about that stuff about what you want to make and so on.
0:33:37 > 0:33:41"Let the appearances tell you what is exciting and what's beautiful."
0:33:41 > 0:33:45I think that's really the most profound influence he had on me.
0:33:45 > 0:33:50He made me think that it was the actual appearances that I'd got to let dictate to me,
0:33:50 > 0:33:55and not me going there doing what I wanted to do and imposing myself on them.
0:33:57 > 0:34:00'Coldstream's teaching methods stopped me trying to make the things
0:34:00 > 0:34:04'I thought I could see and make the things I actually could see.
0:34:04 > 0:34:09'He taught me to think about looking as an adventure in itself
0:34:09 > 0:34:13'and not just a way of finding things to describe objects.'
0:34:13 > 0:34:19COLDSTREAM: I was in an excited state, thinking that I'll try and paint this portrait
0:34:19 > 0:34:25without any regard to style and simply, as it were, recording this person.
0:34:25 > 0:34:27I got a lift through the feeling that I'd do this,
0:34:27 > 0:34:31say I'd never looked at a painting before, and trying to make the thing
0:34:31 > 0:34:34as like - whatever you mean by that - as I can.
0:34:36 > 0:34:41This is a typical painting by William Coldstream.
0:34:41 > 0:34:46Typically boring, it's so glum, murky and uneventful.
0:34:46 > 0:34:49But that's precisely what makes it so revolutionary.
0:34:49 > 0:34:53This is what Coldstream had been working towards all those years.
0:34:53 > 0:35:00This is his final prototype for a new British socialist art of the future, an art of the people.
0:35:01 > 0:35:07And it's only glum, murky and uneventful because, let's face it, life is too.
0:35:07 > 0:35:11And he wanted to make this painting as close to real life as it was possible to get.
0:35:11 > 0:35:19He took six months of painstaking labour to make this picture look this ordinary.
0:35:19 > 0:35:22See the stolid and uninspired composition,
0:35:22 > 0:35:24see the sketchy hesitant brushwork,
0:35:24 > 0:35:28see how he hasn't even got rid of the outline and workings underneath.
0:35:28 > 0:35:35That's all part of Coldstream's attempt to take, if you like, the artiness out of art.
0:35:35 > 0:35:38To transform it from an elitist adventure of
0:35:38 > 0:35:43the imagination into nothing more than good old-fashioned hard work.
0:35:43 > 0:35:50It's a strange ambition, a strangely British ambition, but it's strangely refreshing too.
0:35:50 > 0:35:55Nowadays artists want to be quirky and eccentric and crazy and shocking,
0:35:55 > 0:36:01but I think we'd be a lot better off today if more of them aspired,
0:36:01 > 0:36:04like Coldstream, to be just plain ordinary.
0:36:12 > 0:36:17'But I think he was very sad at the end of his life when he started to get ill.
0:36:17 > 0:36:22'He did say, "I think that people don't really like my painting." '
0:36:22 > 0:36:24I think that did rather depress him.
0:36:24 > 0:36:28But he wasn't very well when he said that so...
0:36:28 > 0:36:34he put the worst construction on it but I do think he did feel under appreciated,
0:36:34 > 0:36:38and rather sad about it because he knew he couldn't paint in any other way.
0:36:38 > 0:36:40He was a painter of great integrity.
0:36:42 > 0:36:45I think he bloody well knew they were good pictures,
0:36:45 > 0:36:48very good pictures, and his friends did. All sorts of people did.
0:36:48 > 0:36:52Lucian Freud knew he was a damn good painter, people knew it.
0:36:52 > 0:36:56How do you make a whacking great reputation like that? I mean how many pictures did he make?
0:36:56 > 0:36:59Hardly any. Very, very slowly, very small.
0:36:59 > 0:37:03I mean they're not hammering off the wall like a Francis Bacon, are they?
0:37:03 > 0:37:07They're sitting there quietly. You've got to go into them and become a part of them.
0:37:07 > 0:37:09He's not making it easy for you.
0:37:13 > 0:37:18'London 1936, the first surrealist's exhibition.'
0:37:18 > 0:37:22But Coldstream's efforts looked hopelessly out of date when a rowdy
0:37:22 > 0:37:27and fashionable avant-garde arrived in London from Paris.
0:37:27 > 0:37:30'The Daily Mail calls it "shocking!"
0:37:30 > 0:37:33' "Pictures unfit for the public at large!" '
0:37:33 > 0:37:39The surrealists provoked the public with shameless publicity stunts.
0:37:39 > 0:37:44Here's Salvador Dali - up to his old tricks.
0:37:44 > 0:37:52He and his friends plundered the dark depths of the human mind to make disturbing dreamlike paintings
0:37:52 > 0:37:58and to Britain's many innocent artists it seemed exotic,
0:37:58 > 0:38:01revolutionary and seductive.
0:38:05 > 0:38:11If you're a serious British artist in the 1930s, you're now faced with a difficult decision.
0:38:11 > 0:38:15Do you fight for Britishness, like Spencer, Munnings and Coldstream?
0:38:15 > 0:38:20Or, do you throw in your lot with the foreign avant-gardes and go modern?
0:38:20 > 0:38:22It's a tough decision. British? Modern?
0:38:22 > 0:38:27If you choose the former you risk being irrelevant, if you choose the later you risk being despised.
0:38:27 > 0:38:30And many artists faltered at this point but there was one
0:38:30 > 0:38:33who decided to do something no-one else even thought of doing.
0:38:33 > 0:38:39He would try to reconcile the two, to make British art modern, and modern art British.
0:38:39 > 0:38:43It was a masterstroke and his name, Paul Nash.
0:38:47 > 0:38:54Paul Nash had made his name as one of the most powerful painters of the First World War.
0:38:54 > 0:38:59But his sympathies with surrealist ideas went back much further.
0:39:03 > 0:39:11He was born into an affluent middle class home, but his was not a happy childhood.
0:39:11 > 0:39:16He was a weak and nervous boy, bullied at school during the days
0:39:16 > 0:39:19and tormented by terrifying dreams at night.
0:39:19 > 0:39:25His mother was a manic-depressive who was prone to fits of violent rage.
0:39:25 > 0:39:33Paul created a secret world for himself where he could hide from all those things that upset him.
0:39:33 > 0:39:39This is Nash's hiding place, and it's right at the end of his garden, the house is over there.
0:39:39 > 0:39:44And being here today, you can see exactly what captured his imagination about this place.
0:39:44 > 0:39:47The whole thing is like a kind of magical kingdom.
0:39:47 > 0:39:49Down there for instance, that's a tree stump,
0:39:49 > 0:39:52but at the same time it looks like a gnarled fist.
0:39:52 > 0:39:55And this is where Nash developed this extraordinary idea,
0:39:55 > 0:39:58the idea that nature was alive, that it had a personality
0:39:58 > 0:40:02and that he had a kind of intimate relationship with it.
0:40:22 > 0:40:26Nash's favourite part of the garden was this row of trees,
0:40:26 > 0:40:29which marked the perimeter of the family's property.
0:40:29 > 0:40:30He was transfixed by them.
0:40:30 > 0:40:33He had this lovely idea that they were like a row of women
0:40:33 > 0:40:37hurrying into the distance wearing these fantastic hats.
0:40:37 > 0:40:39And you realise with ideas like that,
0:40:39 > 0:40:41Nash was for want of a better word a surrealist,
0:40:41 > 0:40:44but he was a surrealist years before term was even invented.
0:40:50 > 0:40:54It was Paul's childhood communion with nature that inspired him
0:40:54 > 0:41:01to take to the road in search of a uniquely English style of surrealism.
0:41:03 > 0:41:07Paul Nash was like no other motor tourist.
0:41:07 > 0:41:10He wasn't interested in the picturesque villages and quaint pubs
0:41:10 > 0:41:13and sandy beaches that everyone else was looking for.
0:41:13 > 0:41:21Instead he was drawn to the dark, strange and uncanny corners of the English countryside.
0:41:30 > 0:41:35On his journeys around England, Nash painted a singular set of landscapes.
0:41:36 > 0:41:39A pile of logs by the road in East Sussex.
0:41:42 > 0:41:46And a haunting array of objects on a Dorset cliff top.
0:41:48 > 0:41:53But the climax of his journey was in the ancient landscape of Wiltshire.
0:41:57 > 0:42:02Paul Nash first discovered this part of the country in the summer of 1933,
0:42:02 > 0:42:06in quite extraordinary circumstances.
0:42:06 > 0:42:08He was actually out on a day trip
0:42:08 > 0:42:10when he suffered a severe asthma attack in a bus.
0:42:10 > 0:42:14His other passengers genuinely feared he was dying,
0:42:14 > 0:42:16and he was being rushed to a nearby hospital
0:42:16 > 0:42:19when suddenly he glimpsed something through the window.
0:42:25 > 0:42:30And as soon as he saw it, he made a miraculous recovery.
0:42:30 > 0:42:35What Paul had seen was a great field filled with standing stones,
0:42:35 > 0:42:40and that was just the beginning of a remarkable relationship.
0:43:10 > 0:43:14When he came here, I don't think his mind was in a good shape,
0:43:14 > 0:43:17because he was searching for a direction in his work,
0:43:17 > 0:43:21and when he came here, he found a way of connecting
0:43:21 > 0:43:24his interest in surrealism with his love of landscape.
0:43:24 > 0:43:28The thing that I find interesting is that it's full of history.
0:43:28 > 0:43:32You're aware of the whole of man's history in this island,
0:43:32 > 0:43:35since the beginning really, and you can see it all around you.
0:43:35 > 0:43:37Or you're aware, you get a sense of it.
0:43:50 > 0:43:54Paul Nash had an overactive imagination,
0:43:54 > 0:43:59so where most people like me see this as...well, an old stone,
0:43:59 > 0:44:02he saw it as a 4,500-year-old person
0:44:02 > 0:44:06making his way slowly but quietly across a field.
0:44:08 > 0:44:13It's an extraordinary idea, and one that I think only a child,
0:44:13 > 0:44:15a mad man or a visionary artist
0:44:15 > 0:44:19could have been lucky enough to have had.
0:44:20 > 0:44:23He has always been a sort of hero to us, really,
0:44:23 > 0:44:25and painters don't lose their impact.
0:44:25 > 0:44:28They're still as powerful, because he just
0:44:28 > 0:44:33took the feelings he had when he was there and made them into a painting, and that's the best way to do it.
0:44:33 > 0:44:36The way he used the paint was so powerful, as well.
0:44:36 > 0:44:39He didn't fuss it around. He just put it on with power, and that comes through.
0:44:42 > 0:44:46Nash painted the stones of Avebury again and again,
0:44:46 > 0:44:52but his masterpiece shows them as a set of modern manufactured structures
0:44:52 > 0:44:55that have somehow crash-landed in a cornfield.
0:44:57 > 0:44:59It's inexplicably haunting,
0:44:59 > 0:45:05as much a landscape of Paul's mind as it is of the Wiltshire plains.
0:45:07 > 0:45:09I think Paul Nash had a revelation here,
0:45:09 > 0:45:12and I think that revelation was this.
0:45:12 > 0:45:15You didn't have to go to Paris to find surrealism.
0:45:15 > 0:45:17You didn't have to read Sigmund Freud,
0:45:17 > 0:45:21and you didn't have to go to Bohemian restaurants and cafes.
0:45:21 > 0:45:24All you had to do was get out into the English countryside,
0:45:24 > 0:45:29and you could find our own native surrealism everywhere you looked.
0:45:29 > 0:45:31Because after all, what's more surreal
0:45:31 > 0:45:38than the chance encounter of a modern artist and an ancient boulder in an English field?
0:45:45 > 0:45:48As the 1930s drew to a close,
0:45:48 > 0:45:53many of those artists who'd flirted with modern, continental painting
0:45:53 > 0:45:59felt compelled to return to the British tradition.
0:45:59 > 0:46:01No one felt a stronger urge to do this
0:46:01 > 0:46:05than the last of the great inter-war painters, John Piper.
0:46:08 > 0:46:12Early in his career, Piper had been at the centre
0:46:12 > 0:46:15of the British abstract movement.
0:46:15 > 0:46:20But this remarkable footage from 1937
0:46:20 > 0:46:23captures him at the crossroads,
0:46:23 > 0:46:27torn between the British painting tradition
0:46:27 > 0:46:30and European modernism.
0:46:30 > 0:46:32In the last few months I've been taking works
0:46:32 > 0:46:35from the London galleries to the Alexandra Palace
0:46:35 > 0:46:37and commenting on them and showing them.
0:46:37 > 0:46:40In the comments that I've made, I've tried to be impartial,
0:46:40 > 0:46:44but I've kept in mind all the time the high percentage of so-called modern art
0:46:44 > 0:46:48that is always to be seen in London Galleries nowadays.
0:46:48 > 0:46:52This is a painting, a landscape by the English master
0:46:52 > 0:46:55Thomas Gainsborough, from the Agnew Collection.
0:46:55 > 0:46:58It's an example of Gainsborough's early work
0:46:58 > 0:47:02before he went to Bath and executed his famous portraits.
0:47:03 > 0:47:07And this is a masterpiece of another kind.
0:47:07 > 0:47:10It's a contemporary painting by a Spanish artist whose work,
0:47:10 > 0:47:13although he's over 50 and his reputation is enormous,
0:47:13 > 0:47:17still causes many quarrels. His name is Picasso.
0:47:17 > 0:47:21This picture is very intense in colour and very lovely.
0:47:21 > 0:47:24I think as lovely in its own way as the Gainsborough in its way.
0:47:26 > 0:47:29- NEWSREEL:- 'The battle for Britain is on.'
0:47:29 > 0:47:3230 enemy aircraft over the Channel, flying due west.
0:47:34 > 0:47:37But it was the course of history
0:47:37 > 0:47:40that would now dictate the direction of John Piper's work.
0:47:40 > 0:47:48In September of 1939, Britain once more went to war with Germany.
0:47:50 > 0:47:52It's a Gerry. Take cover!
0:47:57 > 0:48:03With the outbreak of war, Piper abandoned his continental tastes completely
0:48:03 > 0:48:06and turned back to traditional British painting,
0:48:06 > 0:48:12determined to make art that reflected the apocalyptic mood of the times.
0:48:25 > 0:48:30He travelled through the barren Pennine Hills to Renishaw Hall,
0:48:30 > 0:48:35the home of author Sir Osbert Sitwell,
0:48:35 > 0:48:40a man convinced that the end of days had finally come.
0:48:43 > 0:48:46'I, a citizen of the sunset age,
0:48:46 > 0:48:50'an Englishman who saw the world's great darkness gathering,
0:48:50 > 0:48:54'salute you, stranger, across the chasm.
0:48:54 > 0:48:58'It may be that there's little immediate future for mankind,
0:48:58 > 0:49:03'and that only many centuries hence the ruins will be uncovered,
0:49:03 > 0:49:07'and our distance successors in some form of civilisation
0:49:07 > 0:49:12'will, as they contemplate the various buildings of which the very use is forgotten,
0:49:12 > 0:49:15'wonder about the life of a people, already forgotten,
0:49:15 > 0:49:18'though so few hundreds of years have passed.
0:49:20 > 0:49:25'It is difficult to know the end of the world when you reach it.'
0:49:38 > 0:49:41Piper used to come up and stay a lot during the war,
0:49:41 > 0:49:45and I think it must have been a relief from what he was doing elsewhere.
0:49:45 > 0:49:48And Edith lived here during the war as well with Osbert,
0:49:48 > 0:49:51and so the two of them, they used to write all day.
0:49:51 > 0:49:54All morning they wrote, so Piper really had the place to himself.
0:49:54 > 0:49:58So I think that it was a very inspirational thing
0:49:58 > 0:50:00for Osbert to have commissioned him.
0:50:01 > 0:50:05'Above all, my message is that the world could have been saved,
0:50:05 > 0:50:08'perhaps still can be, though the spirit of man,
0:50:08 > 0:50:13'especially through art, its noblest and most important manifestation.'
0:50:18 > 0:50:20This is the Great Hall at Renishaw,
0:50:20 > 0:50:22and I'm tremendously excited to be here,
0:50:22 > 0:50:26because I'm surrounded on all sides by John Pipers.
0:50:26 > 0:50:32Over there is a great big panoramic view of Renishaw and Bolsover and Hardwick Hall,
0:50:32 > 0:50:34and the great Derbyshire countryside around.
0:50:44 > 0:50:48And behind me are a set of just truly wonderful portraits
0:50:48 > 0:50:52of Renishaw itself - the north front, the south front,
0:50:52 > 0:50:54and of course at the bottom the stable block.
0:50:54 > 0:50:57But this picture is particularly exciting
0:50:57 > 0:51:01because it shows Renishaw seen from above, standing on the roof.
0:51:01 > 0:51:05And seeing them all together is quite a powerful experience,
0:51:05 > 0:51:09because what you actually get the feeling for in this room
0:51:09 > 0:51:11is that it's a kind of altar to the English stately home,
0:51:11 > 0:51:15to that great enduring symbol of English civilisation.
0:51:15 > 0:51:19But when you take a closer look at these pictures,
0:51:19 > 0:51:21you realise it's not just a celebration.
0:51:21 > 0:51:27Look at the dark skies, the ominous crenulations, the dead oak tree over there,
0:51:27 > 0:51:30and you begin to see that all of these pictures are filled
0:51:30 > 0:51:34with a sense of doom, of destruction, of peril.
0:51:34 > 0:51:37And of course Piper made these in the midst of a terrible war,
0:51:37 > 0:51:40and his visits up here were a kind of refuge for him.
0:51:40 > 0:51:44But even then that shadow of war, of destruction,
0:51:44 > 0:51:49of the obliteration of the English way of life, is everywhere apparent.
0:51:57 > 0:52:00When you first arrive at Renishaw, it is quite daunting,
0:52:00 > 0:52:03and there is this extraordinary sort of luminosity,
0:52:03 > 0:52:07wonderful light glow, but quite gloomy at the same time,
0:52:07 > 0:52:11and it's got that sort of surprise element of, what am I coming up to?
0:52:11 > 0:52:14What is going on here? What is this house all about?
0:52:14 > 0:52:17I think that's key to Piper and to Renishaw.
0:52:21 > 0:52:24But Piper's powers as an artist would be tested to the full
0:52:24 > 0:52:27when the apocalypse finally came.
0:52:40 > 0:52:47On the evening of November 14th 1940,
0:52:47 > 0:52:51Coventry was the target of a devastating blitz.
0:52:51 > 0:52:55Eleven hours of blanket bombing all but obliterated the city.
0:53:09 > 0:53:11'When dawn broke the following morning,
0:53:11 > 0:53:14'it was drizzling, and there was a mist over the town
0:53:14 > 0:53:16'as men and women began to crawl out of their shelters
0:53:16 > 0:53:20'to look for their friends and survey the ruins of their city.
0:53:20 > 0:53:22'My mother and I were in the house alone
0:53:22 > 0:53:24'when the bomb hit the house next door.
0:53:24 > 0:53:27'Then the next day we started out and we walked.
0:53:27 > 0:53:30'Hardly a building remained intact.
0:53:30 > 0:53:33'Fires were still raging in every direction,
0:53:33 > 0:53:36'and as we walked the ruined streets, we hardly knew what to do.
0:53:36 > 0:53:39'The greatest difficulty was to gather the children
0:53:39 > 0:53:43'from the various parts of the city which was, by this time, pretty well a wreck.
0:53:43 > 0:53:46'It seemed so hopeless, our homes, shops and places of work
0:53:46 > 0:53:49'and so much of our lovely old city in ruins.
0:53:49 > 0:53:51'You might say we were dazed.'
0:53:55 > 0:53:58Piper arrived here at around 11:30 in the morning,
0:53:58 > 0:54:02and nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.
0:54:02 > 0:54:05Firemen were still fighting the flames,
0:54:05 > 0:54:07bodies were being dragged out of the rubble,
0:54:07 > 0:54:12and everywhere the families of the missing were desperately searching for their loved ones.
0:54:12 > 0:54:14Confronted by scenes like this,
0:54:14 > 0:54:18Piper couldn't exactly get his sketch pad out and start drawing,
0:54:18 > 0:54:25so he found a secret vantage point and there set to work on a painting of immense emotional power.
0:54:29 > 0:54:32The ruins of one building stood out amid the wreckage.
0:54:34 > 0:54:36It was Coventry Cathedral.
0:54:40 > 0:54:45I don't think any family in Coventry, they didn't lose someone.
0:54:46 > 0:54:51You know, a lot of heartaches, there was.
0:54:53 > 0:54:59We lost me auntie, uncle and three cousins in that blitz, 1940.
0:55:07 > 0:55:13When I look at that painting, I do get a sense of sadness,
0:55:13 > 0:55:17because it reminds me of me relations I lost,
0:55:17 > 0:55:20and that's what it is, it's a sad loss.
0:55:22 > 0:55:26It's a loss I don't want to see any more.
0:55:49 > 0:55:53John Piper's little painting
0:55:53 > 0:55:58is often called our answer to Picasso's Guernica.
0:55:58 > 0:56:01Maybe it is, I don't know.
0:56:01 > 0:56:04But it's such a different painting.
0:56:04 > 0:56:06So much more British, so much more understated.
0:56:08 > 0:56:12There's no melodrama, there's no rage.
0:56:12 > 0:56:15There aren't even any people.
0:56:15 > 0:56:17But I kind of think that's the point.
0:56:17 > 0:56:22Piper doesn't need people, because those ruins are the people.
0:56:22 > 0:56:26Those ruins are the whole of Coventry,
0:56:26 > 0:56:30and I think those ruins are the whole of Britain as well.
0:56:30 > 0:56:34Broken and burning,
0:56:34 > 0:56:39but at the same time completely and utterly defiant,
0:56:39 > 0:56:43standing four square in the face of adversity.
0:56:52 > 0:56:56I'm sure that John Piper's painting
0:56:56 > 0:57:01softened the heart but hardened the will of all those who saw it.
0:57:01 > 0:57:08But I think all the painters of this period played their part in the war effort,
0:57:08 > 0:57:12because it was THEIR paintings that together
0:57:12 > 0:57:15gave us a vision of the England that we were fighting for.
0:57:19 > 0:57:23- CHURCHILL:- 'We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be.
0:57:23 > 0:57:26'We shall fight on the beaches,
0:57:26 > 0:57:29'we shall fight on the landing grounds,
0:57:29 > 0:57:34'we shall fight in the fields and in the streets.
0:57:34 > 0:57:36'We shall fight in the hills.
0:57:37 > 0:57:39'We shall never surrender.'
0:57:49 > 0:57:54In an age of anxiety, artists helped Britain find itself again.
0:57:54 > 0:57:59With their paintings they remembered a country to which all of us could escape.
0:57:59 > 0:58:03They invented a country that all of us could love.
0:58:03 > 0:58:06And, as the shadow of a new war descended,
0:58:06 > 0:58:10they forged a country for which all of us could fight.
0:58:20 > 0:58:22Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:22 > 0:58:24Email: subtitling@bbc.co.uk