Review of Struggle and Storm: The Life and Death of Francis Adams, by Meg Tasker, and Jock: A L!fe Story of John Shaw Neilson, by Cliff Hanna

Abstract

Francis Adams lived the sort of life that cries out for a biography. Born in Malta, a son of the regiment, he spent his youth in England, Canada, and Ireland before being educated at Charles Darwin's old school, Shrewsbury. His first job was in Paris as an attache to the British Embassy. Later he was a schoolteacher on the Isle of Wight from where he travelled regularly to London for heady doses of socialism. Marriage was followed by an almost immediate departure for Australia, probably for health reasons since he was tubercular, without his wife, establishing a recurrent pattern of physical separation within apparently amicable relationships.