His Majesty King George VI conferring the Order of Knighthood upon Sir Henry Marten, Provost, on the steps of College Chapel

"Suddenly, when I was still in uniform I got a telegram saying a Colonel Astor from The Times wanted to see me."

Some Old Etonians wanted a painting done to mark the recent ceremony at the school where Eton's provost Sir Henry Marten received his knighthood from King George VI. Sir Henry was tutor to Princess Elizabeth who became Queen in 1953.

Richard's reaction was, "I wondered why on earth they settled on me for a subject like this." 

He visited Eton to meet Sir Henry Marten.
"He was very nice to me.  . . . he showed me …

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"Suddenly, when I was still in uniform I got a telegram saying a Colonel Astor from The Times wanted to see me."

Some Old Etonians wanted a painting done to mark the recent ceremony at the school where Eton's provost Sir Henry Marten received his knighthood from King George VI. Sir Henry was tutor to Princess Elizabeth who became Queen in 1953.

Richard's reaction was, "I wondered why on earth they settled on me for a subject like this." 

He visited Eton to meet Sir Henry Marten.
"He was very nice to me.  . . . he showed me the windows where I could go up and get the best view to make drawings which I have still. But of course I had to do a lot from imagination."

". . . I introduced quite a number of humorous things in it, like a small boy with a catapult in the front row, for instance, who was being restrained by some other boys, and one or two Etonian hats that were being knocked off. None of this was objected to, I’m very glad to say, by the officials or Royalty."

". . . I went up to Buckingham Palace - I was commanded I suppose - to see the Queen in Buckingham Palace about the dresses that they were wearing, the colour of them, and the princesses’ dresses and so on. I had quite a long, very pleasant talk with Queen Elizabeth, mother of our present Queen. And then I had lunch. Well, rations were still very much on the go, even in Buckingham Palace.
  We sat at a large circular table having lunch and there were two ladies-in-waiting sitting on either side of me plying me with questions about one thing and another. And I was eating away at something that I didn’t know what it was quite until I suddenly found myself with my mouth full of bones of some sort. And I thought, ’Well, what on earth shall I do about this?’ So I managed to extract it and put it under my plate. They noticed of course, and being absolutely polite said, ‘Somebody seems to have been chopping this bird up with a hatchet or something.’ which I thought was very nice of them to say that, not to pretend they hadn’t seen it you see.
  They reminded one of Dr. Johnson -was it? - who had some very hot liquor or something in his mouth and spat it out and said, ‘Some fools would have swallowed that."

"But anyway, I produced this picture and I think everybody was absolutely astonished at it. Of course when one considers £500 I realise - it took me 6 months to do it. At the end of that and what with travelling and so on, one realises that it only comes to a sort of working wage. But it’s very nice to have to do something like that. And I could have got any amount of commissions of extremely uninteresting performances of one sort or another, like flags or drums being given to a regiment or something and things of that sort. In fact I was approached by quite a number of military people . . ."

from the Richard Eurich interview by James Mellen done in 1978 for the Imperial War Museum "Artists in an Age of Conflict" series of sound recordings