Ian Johnston was brought up in a shipbuilding family, although his own career was in graphic design. A lifetime's interest in ships and shipbuilding has borne fruit in a number of publications, including Ships for a Nation, a history of John Brown's, and Beardmore Built, the story of another great Clydeside yard.

Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) is a Jewish Czech who wrote in German, and who ranks among the twentieth-century's most acclaimed writers. His works evoke the bewildering oppressiveness of modern life, of anxiety and alienation in a world that is largely unfeeling and unfamiliar.

Although most of his work was published posthumously, his body of work, including the novels 'The Trial' (1925) and 'The Castle' (1926) and the short stories including 'The Metamorphosis' (1915) and 'In the Penal Colony' (1914), is now considered among the most original in Western literature.