Country Cooking (the first two books by the food writer Elizabeth David), travel books such as Time was Away – A Notebook in Corsica, by Alan Ross, and fiction, including Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. He also produced dustwrappers for many publishers including Michael Joseph, Secker and Warburg and Rupert Hart-Davis. One such notable book jacket was for H. E. Bates The Country Heart (Michael Joseph 1949). Although Minton was respected both by the conservative Royal Academy and the modernist London Group, he was out of sympathy with the abstract painting that began to prevail during the 1950s, and he felt increasingly out of touch with current fashion. He suffered extreme mood swings and became dependent on alcohol. In 1957, he took an overdose of sleeping tablets to take his own life at home, 9 Apollo Place, Chelsea, London, and died on the way to St Stephen's Hospital, Chelsea. He left an estate valued at £13,518. Memorials A major exhibition to mark Minton's centenary took place at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester from 1 July to 1 October 2017, co-curated by the Gallery's Director Simon Martin and Minton's biographer Frances Spalding, and is the first exhibition in a museum since the 1994 touring Select Retrospective. Minton was the subject of the song "The Ghost of Mr. Minton" by London-based pop group Would-Be-Goods on their 2008 album Eventyr. A quote from Minton, "We're all awash in a sea of blood, and the least we can do is wave to each other" inspired the title of the Van der Graaf Generator album The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other. In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography's entry on Minton, Michael Middleton writes: References Further reading (Reprint 2005 as John Minton: Dance till the stars come down) Lund Humphries, ) Rigby Graham, 'John Minton as a Book Illustrator', in The Private Library; 2nd series 1:1 (1968 Spring), p. 7-36 John Lewis, 'Book Illustrations by John Minton', in Image''; 1 (1949 Summer), p. 51-62 External links 1917 births 1957 suicides 20th-century English painters Academics of Camberwell College of Arts Academics of the Central School of Art and Design Alumni of St John's Wood Art School Painters who committed suicide English conscientious objectors English illustrators English male painters Gay artists Landscape artists English LGBT people Suicides in Chelsea People educated at Reading School People from Great Shelford British Army personnel of