ABOUT JOHN HOWARD WORSLEY
John was born July 1939, named John Howard Wright.
In 1942 the family were blitzed out of their home at East Cowes
by two tremendous air raids on the night of May 4th/5th. A new
home was found in Ryde which narrowly escaped another hit and
run raid in February 1943. The latter incident is the subject
of "Hit-and-Run on Ryde" in the "Echoes of the
Home Front" series.
In 1956, John joined the Admiralty
as a trainee Technical Illustrator and worked in H.M.S. Vernon,
a shore base at Portsmouth. Here he learned about perspective
and produced many wall diagrams and book illustrations of ships,
torpedoes, mines and aircraft, many of which were produced as
cutaway views for the training of naval personnel.
1967: The next move was to a
small engineering firm which manufactured telescopic masts designed
for many purposes including the checking of instrument landing
systems at airports. Here John eventually ran the publications
department until he became a free-lance illustrator and graphic
designer in the early seventies
Sailing became a great pass-time
and also partly a business as, John was then producing yacht portraits
and exhibition paintings for boat and ship builders. From his
small sloop named 'Palette', he photographed other yachts and
approached the owners offering to paint a picture of their craft.
It
was in 1981 that John adopted the pen-name of John Howard Worsley
for his book
'Spirit of the Stones' , published 1983. John hid 43 real diamonds
on the Isle of Wight, the largest, a one carat gem, was concealed
in a certain way, somewhere on the "Worsley Trail",
one of the many picturesque tracks on the island. In 1984, the
rights of the book were purchased by Commodore Software UK Ltd,
who produced a computer game of the same name. This book/game
package was immensely successful and sold over 32,000 copies grossing
over £400,000.
In early 1987, John was presented
to
H.M. Queen Elizabeth
and H.R.H. Prince Philip
when two of his paintings commemorating the sailing of
'The First Fleet' to Australia, were the
Isle of Wight's official gift to Australia.
The paintings were received by
the High Commissioner for Australia,
Sir Douglas McLelland.
John's next book 'Joseph's
Magic Albatross' was written in 1988
and the manuscript lay dormant for a few years until he acquired
his first Apple Mac computer. The story provided an ideal way
to learn the Mac system and how to use the mouse to sketch the
illustrations on screen. The book was printed in 1993 by Little
Pearl Books, a business set up by Angela, John's new life-partner
who now oversees the production of the range of prints and stories.
Since 1996 John has developed his "Echoes
of the Home Front" series of paintings and stories
November 1999 A large canvas entitled
"One Ran up the Clock" presented at a Gala Banquet in
the
London Science Museum to honour Sir Harold Ridley, inventor of
the intraocular lens which saved the
eyesight of more than 200 million people.
For Details click here