own work. Underwood's 1935 lignum vitae carving African Madonna, or Black Virgin, was inspired by a Bantu carving and is sited in St George's Cathedral, Cape Town. Underwood's 1937 bronze bust of King George VI, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, had originally been intended to be of Edward VIII but was reworked after the abdication of December 1936. When first shown in public, the Buckingham Palace authorities asked that it be removed from view. In 1938, Underwood closed the Brook Green School. During the School's existence, its students had included Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Gertrude Hermes, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Raymond Coxon, Edna Ginesi and Roland Vivian Pitchforth. Moore later spoke of his indebtedness to Underwood's teaching. World War II From 1939 to 1942, during World War II, Underwood worked at the civil defence camouflage centre at Leamington Spa. In 1944, having long collected and studied non-Western art, he undertook a lecture tour, sponsored by the British Council, of west Africa and on his return to Britain wrote three books on aspects of African art. These included a study of the Ife and Benin heads, Bronzes of West Africa which showed a pioneering appreciation of their artistic significance and his understanding of their relationship to the culture and technology from which they originated. Underwood had begun collecting African art in 1919 and, after his 1944 tour, had acquired over 550 pieces including several significant works by Yoruba artists, including sculptures by Olowe of Ise. Some of these works Underwood later sold to the British Museum while others were eventually acquired by National Museum of African Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States. His access to the cave paintings of Altamira in Spain ignited his "New Philosophy" with regard to this interrelationship of the expressiveness and technology of primitive art. Later life From 1948 onwards, Underwood cast his bronze sculptures in his own studio and throughout the 1950s, concentrated on his sculpture and on promoting his theories and philosophy of art. In 1961 Underwood was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Sculptors and further recognition followed in 1969 when the first full-scale retrospective of his work was held at The Minories in Colchester. The art historian John Rothenstein wrote in the introduction to that exhibition that Underwood was "..the most versatile artist at work in Britain today..". However it was to be over forty