Nevill Johnson is better known as a painter and photographer than as a writer. Eoin O’Brien, close friend of Nevill Johnson and literary executor of his estate, has edited his writings in this volume for the first time. The resulting book, provides an intriguing insight into the life of one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Eoin O’Brien, a professor of medicine at both the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Dublin, is author of several highly regarded volumes: among them, The Beckett Country : Samuel Beckett’s Ireland; Conscience and Conflict: A Biography of Sir Dominic Corrigan, 1802–1880, and An Illustrated History of Medicine in Ireland.

‘I promised Nevill that I would see that his art and writings were not forgotten when he was gone. This posthumous mission has taken some time and it is not over. I first met Nevill Johnson in the late 1980s when he was exhibiting at Tom Caldwell’s gallery in Fitzwilliam Street. We found much common ground – life, beauty, literature, art and black and white photography. On that evening he gave me a copy of his autobiography, The Other Side of Six. Fascinated as I was by his painting with its many moods and occult imagery, as I read his autobiography I came to realise that I had also befriended a wonderful writer.’ – Eoin O’Brien, The Irish Times