As magical in its way as Le Nid du Duc, the Pipers’ house is built, like all old Chiltern farmhouses, with brick and flints. It has a long, high barn where John Piper designed his stained glass windows. His other studio was a converted cowshed attached to the kitchen. There is an enlarged cottage garden – not the sort of gentrified garden which regards colour as vulgarity and all the flowers have to be white, or off-white or greenish (a horticultural and social snob once said, ‘If you want colour in your garden, get your cook to go and buy the seeds!’). The Pipers’ garden glows with huge poppies, peonies, golden rod and deep yellow anemones and petunias, stocks and irises; just as the walls of his studio glow with the great flower pieces he did in his last years and with his paintings of French châteaux, Welsh castles and parish churches under dark and dramatic skies. It was there that the painter showed the actor the movements he might go through while depicting the dark interior of a forest.
What do You think about Murderers And Other Friends?
