The elongated shards of smog grey, pea green and lemonade that, since 1968, have cast a wan light on pews reserved for the use of MPs in St Margaret's, Westminster, are untypical of John Piper. Normally, his stained glass seethes, particularly in Coventry Cathedral, where a Piper sunburst behind the boulder that serves as a font irradiates a great wall of clunky fenestration. In Westminster though, in a building studded with fanciful monuments, he had decided to cool it a little. 'Visitors sometimes failed to notice this glass,' Frances Spalding reports, late on in her commendably thorough dual biography. 'John regarded this as a compliment and said he wished there were more opportunities to make such discreet interventions.'

LRB 17 December 2009 | PDF Download