Of the theme of these paintings he says:

"I was born in 1937 and knew little of the war, until 1940 when I started to notice that my mother and aunts were worried about things that were happening, and that I wasn’t allowed to play outside very much.  This change in 1945, everyone was happy.  Dad came home, and my uncles, and there was no need to be afraid any more.  No planes, save our own (how we loved them!).  No buzz bombs and my mother opened the back door and shoo-ed my brother and myself out to play.  We had rotten old bikes that we thought were great and started to explore on them.  From about 1947 I felt truly safe.  I knew my neighbourhood, I knew the kids in the street and we could travel up to 25 miles with a jam sandwich and a bottle of pop.

Now I’m at the other end of my life, but the images of those days still run through my mind.  If you add up what we had, children today might think that we were under-privileged, but we weren’t.  We had time to think, time to get bored and time to exert ourselves with mindless exercise.  I was able to bury myself in nature, to raise small birds and animals, and to start painting wildlife, which eventually became my later career.

These images still remain, but they also seem to be of interest to this generation.  Indeed, my eldest grandson, not known for sitting still for long, once sat for two hours after asking me about my childhood, not stirring.  My generation is probably the last to remember this period and, whilst I’m not claiming historian status, I do feel it would be a pity to let these images fade.