Deerubbin Press - News & Views

New Book

Its Brightening Up, Johnny: A Memoir by John Powell
Born into a naval family in Portsmouth, John's childhood extended through the hardships of the Great Depression to the Blitz of the 1940s and five years of separation from his family during evacuation to the safety of the countryside. This was followed by a decade in which everything was either rationed or in very short supply. All these experiences had a profound impact upon John's character and attitudes. After WWII everything was scarce except work and John threw his energies into an extraordinary variety of jobs and occupations: working at a local bakery, delivering mail, taxi driving, soldiering, selling firewood, driving speedboats for holiday-makers, delivering kerosene, and teaching in primary school for four years.

In 1956, in search of more intellectual stimulus, he enrolled at Bristol University to study philosophy and subsequently taught in universities in Ireland, England, Canada, Papua New Guinea and Australia. These academic activities were combined with a variety of other adventures: cruising holidays on the River Shannon, fieldwork in remote areas of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and establishing a new political party in Australia. The traditional values of academic life were steadily eroded during the 1980s so John decided to take early retirement and break some new ground. John describes a series of decades in which remarkable changes occurred to family, social and institutional life. It was a period incomprehensible to young people today but it produced a generation of resourceful, hard-working individuals who never assumed that natural resources were unlimited.

Published as a limited edition only a short time before John died on 31st August, 2008.