Hilda and I slept alongside each other fully dressed, head to feet.

So profound was his attachment to the village of his birth that most days he would take the train back home in time for tea. The village's Methodist Chapel where the artist worshipped is today the Stanley Spencer Gallery. Spencer met the artist Patricia Preece in 1929 in Cookham.

Spencer's most famous work is the Sandham Memorial Chapel. " Fellow-villagers frequently stand in for their Gospel counterparts lending Christian teachings an eerie immediacy.