AN Alton man whose memoirs were first published last year has now proudly seen them on sale in bookshops.

Featured extensively in the Alton Herald when his books were first released, for 93-year-old John Deverill this is yet another remarkable chapter in a long and colourful life.

Published in two volumes, Ab Initio and Ad Ultimo, each book is sold with John’s visiting card so that readers may contact him if they have points to make or questions to ask.

Born near Lewes, East Sussex, on February 24, 1922, to an English father and an Italian mother, who had met in Italy furing the First World War, from his early teens John had wanted to fly. Leaving school at 16 he worked in his father’s builders’ merchants firm, Phillips and Son (Alton) Ltd, toting bricks, cutting timber and delivering coal until he was old enough to apply to join the RAF as a pilot.

In 1940-41 he was a pilot under training, eventually posted to a Wellington squadron, initially in Iceland and then in the Middle East until the Battle of El Alamein, after which he was a flying instructor in Palestine for a year, returning in 1944 for his second operational tour with 221 Squadron in Italy and Greece.

After the war, and still in the RAF, he studied Arabic at the Middle East Centre of Arab Studies in the Lebanon, working also for the League of Red Cross Societies caring for Palestine Arab refugees. John was then seconded to the Arab Legion as the commander of their small air force.

Invalided home with amoebic dysentery and precluded from returning to work in a hot climate, John applied for a course in Russian at London University and in Paris. He then spent three years as assistant air attache in the British Embassy in Moscow from 1954-57, followed by 1958 at the RAF staff college.

John was then posted to Aden as senior intelligence officer at the headquarters of British Forces Arabian Peninsular. There he met and married Herta Jeuschenak, an Austrian working as an air hostess for Aden Airways.

The couple returned to the UK in 1960 and John retired from the RAF in 1965 as a Wing Commander. Later that year he joined the staff of The Royal Society and for the next 22 years headed their department of scientific international relations and exchanges.

On his travels, John met any number of interesting people, some of them of international fame, including Churchill, Krushchev, King Abdullah, the grandfather of the present King of Jordan, the last of the Romanovs and our own and foreign ambassadors.

Ab Initio and Ad Ultimo are now available at Waterstone’s on Alton High Street.