PARENTS AND CHILDREN IN ART

It is an honour to have been asked to contribute to this volume that c ommemorates the life and work of Spyros Doxiadis. Spyros was, and is s till, a vital and stimulating influence on those of us who were fortun ate enough to have been his colleague in all phases of his life. My pe riod of closeness to him was when he was working in Sheffield with Ron ald Illingworth. At that time (now over 40 years ago) he and Katherine were having their children and my wife and I was having ours. Then wo rds like ''bonding'' had not become commonplace as today, but the func tional patterns of family relationships were something about which we were intensely aware. I particularly remember a summer when we were ho lidaying on a tidal estuary between Anglesey and Holy Island and recal l a moment when Spyros and I were sitting on a grass topped sandbank w atching our children and wives at the water's edge ''messing around'' with a boat. We watched and discussed the beauty of the postures and p oses of our womenfolk with the children and the children with each oth er. It was the memory of that conversation that stimulated me to propo se the topic of this essay in Spyros' memory.