Portrait of a Man
Jonathan Brown
433 pp. • hardback • ISBN 9780648092544 • more than 200 illustrations and facsimiles. •Index
Limited edition of 100 copies.
Published 31 January 2025 for private circulation only.
About the book
A portrait drawn mostly from youthful diaries, letters, and photographs, with the true colours of the contemporaneous record, and many intimate revelations of the interior life of a young man: misery at school; escape into the bush; grief at the death of parents; the loss of the family home; hitchhiking adventures; assaults; passionate loves; mental problems; inspiring universities; a struggle to understand music, literature, and philosophy; and an ardent wish to write. A working life followed: years of much energy, but modest achievement, and some doubts. Travelling for research in late years, and the lifelong company of family and friends, made for a most fortunate life.
About the author
Jonathan Brown was born in Colac, Victoria in 1949. He attended Elliminyt State School, Geelong Grammar School, George Taylor & Son, Melbourne, and the Australian National University. There he studied history, philosophy and law. Later, he studied these areas further at the University of Cambridge. In the early 1970s he lived in Aboriginal communities at Hooker Creek (Lajamanu) and Maningrida in the Northern Territory. After some time in the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in Canberra, he joined the Department of Foreign Affairs where he remained for the rest of his professional life. He travelled widely. He was posted to Paris in the 1990s. His final appointment was Ambassador to Zimbabwe and other African countries in the 2000s. In his retirement he continued to travel widely, collecting recorded music and researching and publishing books on Wagnerian and Homeric topics.
