Peter Kurton was born in 1946 in Kent. His mother was of mixed European descent, serving in the Womens’ Land Army where in 1943 she met Peter’s father, an Italian prisoner-of-war who was there, via Libya, courtesy of Mussolini.
So Peter is a mixture of several different races, Italian, English, Lithuanian and Polish. But the family he found himself born into was effectively English. Just after the outbreak of war the family had moved slightly upmarket to Hackney away from the Stepney Lithuanian ghetto. The language spoken at home in Hackney was English. The other languages died out but Lithuanian still lingered in the households of older relatives.
He became aware of his heritage as he grew up listening to the stories of previous lives in England and abroad going back generations. It was all passed down to him by word of mouth, as was a love of the countryside.
An appreciation of History and tradition was fostered from this complicated background and has found its way into ‘Hackney Now and Then’ and ‘The Promised Land – Escape from Lithuania’.
After junior school, Peter somehow secured a place at Parmiters school, Bethnal Green. Intensive academic subjects like Chemistry, Maths and Physics were beyond him, due, he later realised, to a poor short term memory. Thus he became a bit of a square peg in a round hole. There were other subjects which he was better at, including English, History, Art and Woodwork. He represented the school, the Borough of Hackney and the County of London at Athletics in 1960-1961. These were probably factors that prevented his expulsion, as his behaviour wasn’t always the best. He left at the age of fifteen with a handful of G.C.Es in order to pursue an opportunity in Lithography. After his apprenticeship he worked for forty years in the photo-litho industry all over the city, including Hackney, producing every kind of quality printed material from books to 48 sheet posters, printed cardboard display engineering and limited edition work. Whilst working for the Curwen Press he played an important role in various projects for the Royal Library, Windsor.
Over the course of a lifetime he took up languages and was mainly self-educated, proving the point perhaps that it is never too late to learn. In the changing world of the 1980s he made the transition from traditional printing skills to digital.
He lives in Shenfield, Essex with his wife Sandra and has three daughters from a previous marriage and three grandchildren.
