few years after the war, is characterised by a sense of bleak desolation that suggests the profound introspection that for many followed the devastation of the war. Although he had a great love of nature Nash often used natural subjects to convey powerful and sensitive thoughts concerning the human condition. He was close friends with the writer Ronald Blythe, who dedicated his best-selling book Akenfield to the artist, and who shared his love of the unmanaged forest where fallen trees were left to create their own chaos. In 1923 Nash became a member of the Modern English Water-colour Society. In 1923 he worked in Dorset and in 1924 in Bath and Bristol. From 1924 to 1929 he taught at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (Oxford). In 1927, he wrote and illustrated a book on Poisonous Plants. From 1934 to 1940 he taught at the Royal College of Art in London, working on wood engravings and lithographs. In 1939 he visited the Gower Peninsula, near Swansea – the first of many visits to Gower and other parts of Wales. Nash was also an accomplished printmaker. He was a founder member of the Society of Wood Engravers in 1920. He produced woodcuts and wood engravings first as illustrations to literary periodicals, and then increasingly as illustrations for books produced by the private presses; these include Jonathan Swift's Directions to Servants (Golden Cockerel Press, 1925) and Edmund Spenser's The Shepheard's Calendar (Cresset Press, 1930). His interest in botanical subjects is shown by his illustrations to H. E. Bates Flowers and Faces (Golden Cockerel Press, 1935) and Bob Gathorne-Hardy's Wild Flowers in Britain (Batsford 1938). Later life At the beginning of the Second World War Nash served in the Observer Corps, moving to the Admiralty in 1940 as an official war artist with the rank of Captain in the Royal Marines. He was promoted acting major in 1943, and relinquished his commission in November 1944. After the war, Nash lived at Wormingford, in the Stour Valley in Essex where he had bought the Elizabethan yeoman's house, Bottengoms in 1944. Nash joined the staff of the Royal College of Art in 1945 and continued to teach there and later at the Flatford Mill field studies centre. When in Essex, Nash taught at Colchester Art School and in 1946, along with Henry Collins, Cedric Morris, Lett Haines and Roderic Barrett, became one of