In 1983, Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams took a motoring tour with the artist, often in the footsteps of the English watercolourist John Sell Cotman when in East Anglia, and wrote a book about it, illustrated by Piper: Piper’s Places: John Piper in England & Wales. Its publication in that year coincided with a big retrospective at the Tate and an exhibition of new work at Marlborough called Romantic Places. In an article for Country Life (22 December 1983), ‘The Picture and the Picturesque’, Christopher Neve observed that ‘Abstraction starved [Piper]. He needed the excitement and interest of his subjects, and the places and buildings he loved.’ Ingrams wrote: ‘Still Piper personally prefers the church of West Walton which we drive to next. It is a more isolated and romantic place, and there is plenty of ‘pleasing decay’ about the massive Early English tower – separated from the church like many towers in this part of England, the builders fearing land subsidence on the damp Fenland soil. Swallows swoop in and out of the archway where they are nesting. It is my turn to fetch the key from the vicarage.’ Piper: ‘Very plain and marvellous: it’s like a superior Romney Marsh church.’ Ingrams: ‘What he likes most is the contrasting textures of plaster, grass and brick. Most country churches were then [in Cotman’s time] at an extreme of picturesque beauty. Ready to drop like overripe fruit, they were in an exquisite state of decay. In almost every village church a derelict wicket gate opened onto a porch strewn with straw, and a creaking door led into a nave full of worn grey box pews. Clear glass windows let in the sunlight that streamed over the faded umbers, ochres and greys of the walls, furniture and floor, and the whole scene was enriched by splashes of brilliant colour provided by tattered cushions and hangings.’ Piper, describing Cotman’s work, described his own: ‘These drawings dwell on three facts: the beauty of texture of decaying stonework and woodwork; the clear light of East Anglia, and (in the exterior views) the wholeness, the oneness – like a good piece of sculpture – of each church in its relation to its landscape.’ There is a screenprint of our picture, the same size, of 1981, published by the Marlborough Gallery in an edition of 70.