John Field lives, with his wife Marie, in Ipswich, where Giles
spent almost all of his working life. Their three grown-up children are now
dispersed.
He is an urban planner and landscape architect and, after almost 40 years
in Local Government, now runs a planning consultancy. Although he does not
claim to have been a close friend of Giles, he met Carl on a number of
occasions, particularly when the Council was trying, unsuccessfully, to
persuade the cartoonist to support the idea of a plaque on his studio
building to celebrate his work. Eventually, 10 years later, Carl did agree
to the idea of a sculpture of the famous Giles family, which now stands
outside the building in the centre of the town.
Field greatly admires not only the humour contained in the cartoons but
also the quality of Giles's drawing. He believes that Giles was an artist
of merit, especially with his collection of cartoons depicting great pieces
of architecture, usually as a backcloth to the humour.
His interests cover painting and sketching, photographing buildings and
townscape (particularly of Ipswich, his home town), France, eating and
yoga. He also enjoys hill walking, and, apart from annual visits to the
Lake District, has, for a number of years, spent one week a year walking,
with a group of friends, on one of the Mediterranean Islands, most recently
Sardinia.
He likes foreign travel and has made, over the years, a number of visits to
Mexico and India, both Countries which he greatly admires, and, each year,
spends three weeks in the United States, where his eldest son is Professor
of Art History at Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia.
His other son is a landscape architect and his daughter, a free-lance
photographer.