This was something of a departure for me. It started as something completely different which didn’t work out, so I put some glazes on that became sand, and added the ocean at the top right. There was some bleed-through that looked faintly like crosses, and I happened to be watching a video on the start of the First World War at the time, and the inspiration came to finish it as a beach scene from July, 1914 in France, a month before the war began. What has always struck me most about that Summer of 1914 is the repeated recollection by many people that it was a beautiful summer, one of the nicest Europe had seen in living memory.