Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2008 | Page 32

life

INTERVIEW

Roe and joined the Home Guard, and
his experience belies that portrayed
in television’s Dad’s Army. “We only
paraded once a week but sometimes one
was in uniform and there was no time
to change before getting back to the
office. We took it very seriously.” As a
result he had little time for painting.
But as soon as he could after the war
he picked up his paintbrushes again.
And immediately got a picture into the
Royal Academy. “I thought I was jolly
lucky to get a picture in straight after
the war,” he says with typical modesty.
His marriage to Rosemary Britten, he
says, was “a good move, because my
great passion was for classical music.”
They had met as young people growing
up in Bembridge, and it had been music
that had drawn them together. As well
as being a pianist, she played cello and
flute. During the war she served in the
Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) as
an Intelligence Officer, and, Morton
confides, had been one of the few women
to be shot down during the war:
“She was in a Halifax bomber, towing
gliders on an operation. They’d dropped
a glider and got hit by Anti-Aircraft fire
and had to make a forced landing on a
US airbase on one side of the Rhine with
the Germans on the other. Of course as
an Intelligence Officer she shouldn’t have
been there, and she kept it secret for 40
years.” He is obviously still proud of her
pluckiness. “There is plenty of gallantry
on her side of the family,” he says.
After they married they moved to

32

Suffolk, eventually settling in Eye (with
a holiday cottage in Aldeburgh), where
he exhibited to local galleries and she
taught music. He became a member
of the committee of the Aldeburgh
music festival, with Benjamin Britton
and Peter Piers. “It was fantastic to
see some of the great musicians at
work!” he enthuses. And here two of his
great passions coincide, for he began
a series of paintings documenting the
conversion into a concert hall of the
collection of old barns set amongst reed
beds which comprise Snape Maltings.
Disaster befell the venue just two years
after its opening. On the first night of
the festival, the Maltings were completely
gutted by fire, which ironically gave
Morton the subject matter for some of his
favourite paintings. “I experimented to
get the effects of the steel after the fire,
using a technique of printing onto bits
of paper to build the effect of blistered
steel. I splattered it and messed about

Elm Trees, Brading

with the surface – it was interesting and
gave a texture in the steel which plain
watercolour could not have achieved.”
A painting of Britten’s charred-edged
score of Idomeneo, found behind the
stage, again documents the poignancy
of seeing the destruction of the
building which he was instrumental
in supporting. Amazingly though,
restoration took just one year and the
festival, which had partly relocated
to nearby Blythburgh after the fire,
was back in the beautiful location
which has since become a fixture
in the classical music calendar.
For the rest of the time he was
painting Suffolk landscapes, and as
he so tellingly says, “apart from other
things I did” he was an early chairman
of the Gainsborough House Society,
a charity which runs the house in
Sudbury where Thomas Gainsborough
was born. He introduced more modern
works from Suffolk and Norfolk, such as
an early exhibition of works by Lowry.
“I’ve never been short of work, I’ve
been constantly busy. I’m much too
interested in people and teaching and
seeing works by amazing, brilliant artists,”
he says. In true Renaissance fashion he
became a technical artist involved with
Snetterton motor racing, designing the
bodies of cars, some of which raced at Le
Mans. He has also illustrated two books
for Dorothy Hammond Innes (whose
author husband was a one-time sailing
companion of his), and a book on the
Bembridge Redwings by David Swinstead.
Unsurprisingly, given his precocious
attitude to change, he did some work
in television, running art competitions
for children. “We didn’t give prizes
or false money!” he grins wickedly,
referring to the scandals recently
uncovered on today’s programmes.

The Garland, Bembridge

Island Life - www.isleofwight.net