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The large book sale at the men's shed on Magnetic Island yielded a welcome clutch of works by English novelist, playwright , screenwriter, broadcaster , editor , J. B. Priestley (1894-1984) .
Each one contained the bookplate of the late Donald Simpson , a Townsvile born teacher, who became the headmaster of a British school , promoted new mathematics , produced Gilbert and Sullivan plays , retired to Magnetic Island and armed with a camera wrote prolifically about its plants , available on online today .
Obviously, he was a Priestley fan . Included in his collection was a copy of the l940 Postscripts, a compilation of the weekly powerful talks Priestley read over the BBC to bolster the nation against the German attacks , covering a period from June 5, l940, after the Dunkirk withdrawal , to October 20, 1940.
In l942 he was co-founder of the socialist Common Wealth Party . It is said his political broadcasts and his hopes for a better Britain after the war helped the Labour Party's landslide victory in 1945 .He was also a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament .
In the aptly named Delight volume, consisting of a 114 pieces he wrote ,covering a wide range of subjects , Priestley recalled he was 16 when the first article he had published , in a London humorous weekly.
His schoolteacher father presented him with a fourpenny cigar to mark the occasion . Working as a reporter and spending a considerable amount of time in a pub gets gets a mention , also his dislike of hectic New York .
This blog has mentioned that when James Frederick Bowditch went to Alice Springs after WWll, he joined the local theatrical group and one of the shows he performed in was Priestley's They Came to a City . Bowditch went on to become a fearless, crusading Northern Territory editor .
