John Piper was an artist who has touched our lives in many ways: through his illustrations for the Shell guides, his stained glass and tapestries, and through his contribution to post-war debates about planning.

The Shell guides were his route to a larger public, opening up the countryside to pre-war motorists. Before being asked to contribute by his friend John Betjeman, Piper had been making a name for himself as an abstract painter.

His guide to Oxfordshire was the beginning of a long love affair with the county and by the end of the 1930s he had begun opening his art to a sense of place, belonging, identity, history and memory.

Frances Spalding’s latest book encompasses the lives of John and his wife Myfanwy in a single account.

She said: “Some critics think he was over-productive and that this was a mistake, I don’t. He was generous to his public, demonic and reacting.

“He was fascinated by the vernacular – the everyday, helping us all to think about what makes up a town or village. Thanks to his involvement with the Shell Guides we all became better informed about what matters.”

When the guides were no longer printed in the late 1960s, Piper felt as if he had lost a limb. “Although much of John Piper’s work encouraged conservation, he disliked it when conservation fixed a building in time. He talks of pleasing decay in an organic way. Piper believed that like people, a building should both live and die beautifully.”

Mary Myfanwy Evans entered Piper’s life in 1934 on a train to Suffolk. She left the train knowing that his interests matched hers and apparently, on first meeting her, Piper thought she was the ‘cat’s whiskers’.

Myfanwy was to provide the structure and stability he needed. Speaking at his 80th birthday party in 1983, Myfanwy said that she had lived with John Piper for more than half his life and had loved every other minute.

Because he didn’t want to live in London, they bought an abandoned farmhouse in the village of Fawley Bottom, (then in Oxfordshire, but now in Buckinghamshire) and lived there throughout their lives. Frances believes this says much about their relationship.

The chief difficulty she encountered while writing about Piper was his diversity. As her research progressed, she changed the emphasis of the book in order to bring out the full stature of John and Myfanwy Piper as creative individuals. “I began to place more emphasis on the context of their varied achievements,” she said.

The result is an eminently readable book that embraces both their personal lives and their work. Frances has not attempted to act as an art critic in putting this splendid book together – she simply places their many achievements before us so that we can judge their worth.

Initially, she began working on the Piper archives, temporarily lodged in a fireproof room in the archives of publisher John Murray. She speaks fondly of the enormous pleasure she experienced working in a building so rich in literary history. Unfortunately, before her book was finished, John Murray became part of a larger firm, which worried about things like the reproduction charges for the 85 colour prints that were to be an essential part of this remarkable book.

It was Oxford University Press which saved the day. Frances said: “The Press has a wonderful production team, who took such trouble and care with the illustrations. It was an enormous task, but it came out very well. The book actually sold out within two weeks of being published and has already been reprinted three times.”

Frances puts the success of her book down to the quality of the print and the professional way the pages have been set out. “It was so good to work with a publisher who was prepared to put everything into producing a book that people wanted to hold and read.”

During her prolific writing career, she has already written biographies of Roger Fry Vanessa Bell, John Minton, Duncan Grant and the poet Stevie Smith. She says she has been so impressed by the way Oxford University Press operates she will always approach them first in future.

* John Piper Myfanwy Piper is published by Oxford University Press at £25. Frances Spalding is at the Oxford Literary Festival on March 25. See www.oxfordliterary festival.com, box office 0870 343 1001.