GJ Mann

One of my clear childhood memories is often ‘hearing’ my mother telling me I could write.

Born in East Anglia in the post war 1950’s, our family would often be gathered around a black and white television, sitting in front of a winter coal fire. While my father would often be asleep after a hard day's graft, my mother would be quietly reading one of the two or three library books she had dotted around the house at any one time. She often read romantic fiction. However, we both enjoyed watching crime fiction together. I like to think she would love to read ‘The Corleone Christ’. 

As a young boy I spent many hours cycling to rivers, to fish; often sitting on the banks of the Stour, observing nature, listening to the breeze in the great elm trees, (sadly no longer with us).

Through the early years, watching through the window of black and white television I remember being inspired about the natural world through the travels of a young guy called David Attenborough, who went on to show us the ‘Blue Planet'. The book cover, beautifully designed by Freda Rose, references a Hubble Telescope photograph, looking back at our planet; Carl Sagan branded this image the ‘Pale Blue Dot’. This fantastic photograph shows us we are alone in managing our own human behaviour towards our climate, other species and our own environment. No one is coming to our rescue.

I remember watching the heady days of USA news, JFK’s inauguration speech and Dr Martin Luther King’s, ‘I have a Dream’ vision at the Lincoln Memorial; the powerful, nonviolent peace marches, struggling against racial prejudice, segregation and, for equality in the USA. These images spilled over the Atlantic and inspired us watching these events through our screens.

The Moon landing………………

In a period just before leaving home I also remember sitting up on my own for several nights watching a series of black and white footage about the Holocaust. Living in our family with parents who served in the forces, they gave me no preparation for understanding the Nazi Predator they and the rest of our allies had been fighting against. Looking back, that formative series had a huge impact on me, in taking on this book.

Leaving school at 16, I worked in a family business. Then, afterwards, leaving home at 17/18, I rented a room with no access to television. My evenings were spent disappearing and diving into live music venues, making music and working as a volunteer; I also found myself regularly immersed in great works of fiction by Conrad, Hardy, Kafka, Dostoyevsky and Steinbeck. Living on my own, eventually the pages of my own world began opening up; I never lost the love of reading.

From then on, everything became a journey of ‘leavings’

I left working in the family business to work in Residential Social Work with children; then left that work to work therapuetically with troubled adolescents. Then, moving on, I worked in the ‘community’ in fostering, adoption and reuniting children with their own parents. Then, I 
left again, to qualify as a professional social worker. Finally, of course I left training, but not knowing I was beginning a long vocation, working for people and families struggling with the impact of Mental Ill Health in their lives.

Throughout this time, I carried on learning through two levels of postgraduate education while working at a senior professional level to combine Local Authority and NHS Trust services in the best interests of patients, in two separate localities, one after the other.

All the way through this period of time my wife and I had, from the beginning, begun our own journey as a family moving through several different houses: supporting our children into becoming the three beautiful, interesting adults they are today.

Looking over the shoulder of my own writing now, I can see several of the themes in ‘The Corleone Christ’ have grown from my childhood, early adulthood, right through to the experiences and privileges of ‘walking’ with and talking with a large number of children, adults and families listening to their stories, trying to understand and then searching for solutions together with them.