Perhaps best known as an art historian and museum director, DAVID PIPER studied Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge from 1937 to 1940. During the Second World War he served with the Indian Army, training as an officer in Bangalore before joining the 4th Battalion, 9th Jat Regiment. The battalion arrived in Malaya in January 1942, and Piper’s first novel, Trial by Battle, vividly describes the confused jungle fighting in that campaign which led to his capture near Singapore. From February 1942 to September 1945 Piper was a Japanese prisoner of war, first in Singapore and later Taiwan.
After the war Piper married and returned to Britain, beginning a career in art history at the National Portrait Gallery in London. He spent twenty years there (the last three as Director), before becoming the Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in 1967. In 1973 he became the first Director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
David Piper published a number of books on art history alongside five novels under the pseudonym Peter Towry (Towry being his middle name). Trial by Battle was the first of these novels, focusing on his experience of the Second World War. He was knighted in 1983.