Stanley Spencer first met Desmond Chute when he was working as an orderly at the Beaufort War Hospital in Bristol in 1915. Chute was five years his junior and an intellectual who would translate Homer to Spencer and at his home in Clifton. Their friendship continued throught the First World War but Desmond, a devout Roman Catholic became distanced from Spencer when he began training as a Dominican priest
(See K.Pople. Stanley Spencer, London, 1991, p.p. 109-110, 274)