Nicholson went on to play a leading role in defining Modernism in this country, but, if it had been him who had died in August 1930, he would be no more than a footnote to our artistic history: the son of Sir William and husband of Winifred. When Wood and Nicholson exhibited together in Paris in May 1930, it was Wood’s pictures which sold, albeit to a friend, and Wood who was hailed by the press in both Paris and London while Nicholson was universally ignored.The picture thought to be Wood’s last (painted in the month of his death), Zebra and Parachute, with its echoes of the sort of Surrealism practised by de Chirico, offers a clue to the road he might have taken, but more conclusively it shows something of the way he was feeling. It is a lonely, rather melancholic image that seems to acknowledge its status as an end- picture in its strange iconography. A listless, perhaps dead, figure drops to earth behind the Villa Savoye – Le Corbusier’s then unfinished villa on the edge of Paris – his red-and-yellow parachute like a sun setting on a building that was itself a symbol of European Modernism.`An English Painter’ by Richard Ingleby is published by Allison & Busby on 29 May at pounds 25. An exhibition of Christopher Wood’s paintings is at the Fine Art Society, 148 New Bond Street, London W1, from Monday. He was sitting hunched over his beer in the dark, dreary club on a Sunday afternoon, with his mates He was wearing a sweatshirt and Wranglers.

A broad, muscular back which was just a bit too muscular, the proportions evidently shaped and moulded by hard work in the gym, and steroids The barman in the club looked a little wary “I saw that lot in a restaurant one Sunday night Three men came in with shotguns to shoot them I couldn’t believe it There must have been an argument or something. So these guys levelled their shotguns at them and said `Get down on your knees. You’re going to die.’ One of the gang was in the toilet and he came out and saw what was going on He punched one of the fellas The rest jumped the other two. I heard afterwards that the police said it was this lot’s fault anyway. They said that the men with the guns were scared of them because they were so big. The shotguns had been nicked, but they still only got 18 months.”

The barman pulled the beer slowly. “I wouldn’t fancy getting on the wrong side of them, would you?”
This was not at all what I wanted to hear.

I was two hours late for my interview with John, an ex-Para, a Falklands vet, and a man, in his own words, on a very short fuse.I asked John to tell me about his background. “I left school at 15 and was an apprentice butcher for a while. Then I went into the iron foundry, but it frightened me to death. Whenever they tapped the kilns out, you were always getting burned The fumes were terrible It was like Dante’s Inferno. I didn’t have any qualifications, so I joined the Army.”It all seemed very glamorous This was in the late-Seventies. I turned up at the depot in Aldershot wearing a Second World War flying jacket, a pair of loon pants I’d bought from Virgin and a pair of platform soles. When I was walking through the gates, this man said to me, `Where the fucking hell have you parked the Spitfire?’ He gave me a bit of useful advice – `If you want to get anywhere in this life, lad, you’ll buy yourself a pair of Wranglers, a pair of desert boots and a sweatshirt.’ I did this immediately.”I found the training hard Nowadays, the training staff can’t be brutal to men But in my day, they could do what they liked to you.

And I’m not talking about a little tap on the head either, I’m talking about a proper punch – on the back of the head, anywhere, to get you motivated Now, it’s the soft shoe shuffle That’s why the soldiers today aren’t as good as they were But we all suffered the same together That was important The section corporals beasted us That’s what they call it, `beasting’ But you need that to motivate you. There was one corporal in particular – if I saw him today, I’d kill him.”I wanted to point out that this was a little incongruous. After all, he had just praised the training methods of the Paras. But I kept quiet.”They teach you everything in the Paras,” continued John. “Even how to shower properly, because a lot of guys didn’t really know how to wash They were from the slums. They started with the basics, and then tried to weld you into a little team.”My first posting in Northern Ireland was Crossmaglen A right place – plenty of action.