In 1978 Brian Eno produced a recording of "Irma" for Obscure Records directed by Gavin Bryars with a cast including Howard Skempton and Phillips himself. Phillips began contributing regular reviews to "The Times Literary Supplement" (now "TLS"). At the beginning of the 1980s he designed a series of tapestries for his old Oxford college and he returned to portraiture with a portrait of Pella Erskine-Tulloch (the bookbinder who bound Phillips' favourite version of "A Humument" in three volumes). Erskine-Tulloch would become the subject of a series of weekly sittings which he described as "Pella on Sunday". He had moved out of the family home at 102 Grove Lane and moved back into his studio at 57 Talfourd Road in Peckham. A man with a great pleasure in habit, he would lunch every Tuesday in the Choumert Café on Choumert Road. His private limited edition of his own translation of "Dante's Inferno" illustrated with his prints was published in 1983 and in 1984 he was elected a Royal Academician. Peter Greenaway and Phillips co-directed "A TV Dante" with John Gielgud and Bob Peck, which was broadcast on Channel 4 television in 1986. During this time he also collaborated with Malcolm Bradbury, Adrian Mitchell, Jake Auerbach, Richard Minsky and Heather McHugh.