FORMER Doctor Who director Tristan de Vere Cole took a journey back in time when he opened the Augustus John display at Fordingbridge Museum.

Television and film director Mr de Vere Cole is the last surviving offspring of the artist who was famed as much for his Bohemian lifestyle as for his character portraits.

Now aged 70, Mr de Vere Cole directed the Doctor Who serial The Wheel in Space back in 1968.

As a boy he lived as part of the John family at Fryern Court, Fordingbridge.

His mother was Mavis Wheeler, who enjoyed a relationship with Augustus John during his time with wife Ida and, after her death, partner Dorelia, or Dodo, as she was known.

He supplied a photograph of Dodo and his father taken in 1960, a year before his death, which has been enlarged and now provides part of a grainy monotone backdrop to the display of original works.

Television and radio coverage of Mr John's death made more of his lifestyle than his art, but Dodo was always treated with great warmth by the shopkeepers of the town.

However, there were others ashamed of his Fordingbridge links, who insisted that the striking statue of Augustus by Ivor Roberts-Jones should be hidden away in a corner of the recreation ground.

Now the bronze is a feature of Riverside Place, formerly the site of the Greyhound Hotel, "one of Augustus's favourites" and near the site of the Albany Hotel, which is where many of his sitters would stay.

Works on display at the museum include a self-portrait from about 1933, and drawings of Ida and their children David, Robin, Edwin and Casper.