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John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art

This is a comprehensive study of two figures whose wide-ranging activities brought them to centre-stage in the cultural history of 20th-century Britain. The research makes available full coverage of all aspects of John Piper's fertile, wide-ranging career as well as the contribution made by his wife, the editor, anthologist and librettist, Myfanwy Piper. It details, for instance, the history of the magazine 'Axis' which Myfanwy Piper edited; it traces the development of the Shell Guides and John Piper’s close involvement with their making; it investigates the collaboration between Myfanwy Piper and Benjamin Britten in connection with three operas; and it highlights John Piper’s involvement with the Liturgical Movement through his work on church commissions involving, chiefly, stained glass or tapestries. The book contains substantial new information, extracted from interviews with those who knew or worked with the Pipers, and from archives preserved in Windsor Castle, the crypt of Liverpool Catholic Cathedral, Coventry Cathedral, the Imperial War Museum, Tate and elsewhere. The author was the first person to have access to the massive Piper archive, since acquired by the Tate under the Acceptance-in-Lieu scheme. The book is an essential source of reference on their work and on the many collaborative projects with which they engaged. The research also adds to recent scholarship on the 'modern English renaissance' and the turning aside from the imperatives of International Modernism, in order to let in an awareness of history, memory and a sense of place - all things which modernism, with its denial of the past, had suppressed.

The request for double-weighting relates to scale and scope. The Pipers benefited from several creative networks and received many public commissions, royal, state, ecclesiastical and private. Extensive travel was necessary to evaluate John Piper’s artistic achievement, architectural writings, and his stained-glass. Archival material was uncovered, in Windsor Castle, cathedral crypts, college libraries, country houses, regional offices, and in the archive accumulated by the Pipers over fifty years. A holistic approach was adopted which used wide-ranging sources, including oral history, acquired through interviews with craftsmen, artists, architects, patrons and churchmen who had worked with the Pipers. The book took six years.