During the Second World War, John Kingsley Cook (1911-94) served in the merchant navy as a wireless officer. He joined in 1940, and went on his first sea voyage, to the United States, in December 1940. His ship was sunk off the coast of Algeria in 1941, the survivors being taken captive and held there until liberated after the Allied landing in North Africa in 1942. He resumed service after a few months recuperating at home, and was discharged in August 1945, when he joined the staff at the Edinburgh College of Art. There, he taught engraving and graphic design and lectured on the History of Art, before being appointed Head of Design in 1960. He retired in 1971.
Throughout the war, Cook drew life at sea and in captivity. He also created a number of retrospective drawings in the 1980s, when he was working on his (as yet unpublished) memoirs. 262 drawings and 2 paintings of his wartime experiences were presented by his family to the National Maritime Museum in 2012.


Art materials were difficult to procure in captivity and Cook mostly used a thick, handmade packing paper, which absorbed inks and paints. He may also have favoured it because it evoked suitably the dry, ruggedness of his desert surroundings. Algeria conjured up great Orientalist painters, such as Eugène Delacroix or Holman Hunt, as Cook related in his drawings and letters home. He was frustrated by his Arab guards’ reluctance to sit for him: this is one such rare portrait.