When my moment came, it could have been designed to trigger a spiritual fugue. My chapel perilous was a cell in Alem Bekagn, the infamous prison of Addis Ababa whose name means "farewell to the world." It was a clever variation upon the perfect Benthamite concept: the prison was a ring of cells around a central courtyard where we washed and exercised, in so far as either was allowed, and while we could be at all times observed, and could look deeper into the prison itself, there was no view of anything beyond the walls. I think that last was diabolically clever. It made everything feel absolute and the possibility of release or escape faded away into the dull bricks. I won’t claim it was a particular torture for an artist: I sketched with a bit of charcoal on scraps of paper. I drew other prisoners, and landscapes from memory. My cell had windows on the Alps, the Italian lakes, the Cornish coast. They became my currency, my way to bribe the guards for food, sleep and indulgence. For secret pleas to my old friends, now vanished into hiding.