From the Jerusalem Diary of Eric Gill

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Gill was commissioned to carve a number of inscriptions in Oxford, including this one on Blackfriars Hall, St. In the period 1930–31, Gill designed the typeface Joanna which he used to hand-set his book, An Essay on Typography. Gill was born in Brighton and grew up in Chichester, where he attended the local college before moving to London. Throughout 1931 and into 1932, Gill worked on Prospero and Ariel, and four other works for the BBC, on site in central London.

He created engravings for a series of books published by the Golden Cockerel Press considered among the finest of their kind, and it was at Capel that he designed the typefaces Perpetua, Gill Sans, and Solus. The text of this version is set in Joanna and Joanna italic and is printed on pale blue Arnold hand-made paper. Previously, in 1911, Gill had cut the inscription for the foundation stone of the British Museum's new King Edward VII building. Eric Gill was one of the great British artists of the 20th century – and a sexual abuser of his own daughters. In 1909, Gill carved Alphabets and Numerals for a book, "Manuscript and Inscription Letters for Schools and Classes and for the Use of Craftsmen", compiled by Edward Johnston.The question of whether we can separate the art from the abuser is becoming outdated in the art world. Gill's religious beliefs did not limit his sexual activity, which included several extramarital affairs. Gill was also deeply fascinated with sex and eroticism, a theme which is considered to clash with his deep religiosity. In 1905 he was elected to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society and joined the Fabian Society the following year.

John’s College was sculpted by him, and Campion Hall has a number of his wooden panel carvings with both religious and domestic scenes that decorate their entrance, stairways, and coffee room. This resulted in a 2017 exhibition Eric Gill: The Body and a commitment by the museum to include at least one display highlighting Gill's offending in its permanent exhibitions. Art-Nonsense And Other Essays by Eric Gill was published in 1929 and marked the first commercial use of the Perpetua typeface. I suggest this is a somewhat blunt way of discussing issues that are both very sensitive and highly complex. When Hawkins was sent away from Pigotts, to the boarding house at Capel-y-ffin run by Betty Gill, Eric Gill followed her there to continue the relationship.

This was an envelope in the Ditchling archives, on the back of which, in two columns, Gill had listed, in some detail, the measurements of various parts of the bodies of his daughters, Elizabeth (Betty) and Petra.

In 1913, Gill and his wife converted to Catholicism, and moved two miles north to Ditchling Common where their property had outbuildings and farming land. The sculpture is undeniably lovely– inspired by The Tempest, the carvings of Ariel in turn inspired the title of the BBC’s in-house newsletter– but herein lies part of the problem, once you know what he got up to and how closely his artwork is tied to the sexual abuse of children and animals. Along with his friend and collaborator Jacob Epstein, Gill planned the construction in the Sussex countryside of a colossal, hand-carved monument in imitation of the large-scale structures at Gwalior Fort in Madhya Pradesh.

Beside the main entrance to the British Museum, Gill designed and carved, with Joseph Cribb, the memorial inscription to the museum staff killed in the conflict and for the Victoria and Albert Museum, again with Cribb, he created the war memorial in that museum's entrance hall.

In 1907, Gill moved with his family to Sopers, a house in the village of Ditchling in Sussex, which would later become the centre of an artists' community inspired by Gill. Later in his life, Gill cited the Norman and medieval carved stone panels in Chichester Cathedral as a major influence on his sculpture. It seems that, either the post-modern, punk 1980s were not as far from the attitudes of the interwar period, or Gill’s works simply crossed the fine line of universally understood morality. He also began to use wood engraving techniques for his book illustration work, notably for a 1907 edition of Homer for Count Kessler. These included Denis Tegetmeier, Reginald Lawson and the artist and poet David Jones, who was to become engaged for a time to Gill's second daughter, Petra.Gill’s reputation may have been darkened by the truth behind his artistic talent, but that didn’t stop him from maintaining his spotlight in the British art world. For the Chapel of Saint George and the English Martyrs, in Westminster Cathedral, Gill designed a low relief sculpture to occupy the wall behind the altar.