J. K. N. Jones was born in Birmingham, England, on 28 January 1912 and died in Kingston, Ontario, Canada on 13 April 1977. He was the eldest son of George Edward Netherton Jones and Florence Jones Goodchild). His family had long been established in the Midlands, his paternal grandfather James Jones, being a well known ironmaster in Walsall, a town which prospered during the Industrial Revolution. His maternal grandparents (the Goodchilds) lived in Swansea, Wales, and his mother was the eldest of their seven children. His father, who also was one of seven children, was for most of his career a shipping agent for the Elder Dempster line. Unhappily he was badly gassed in the World War I; this left him in poor health and he died in the early 1920s from tuberculosis. During the next few years Jones’s mother (who was well known as an athlete) was left to struggle on and she had to fight bitterly to secure a pension for herself and her seven children. Life was very hard for the family for the pension was not granted until 1926 and shortly afterwards his mother died from blood poisoning. The family was now separated, the six eldest children were made Wards of the Ministry of Pensions and were split up among five families. The youngest, who was born after the war ended in 1918, was not supported by the Ministry of Pensions and was sent to an orphanage. Jones had a particular affection for this brother, Geoffrey David, and suffered great grief when the boy who was a bomber pilot in World War II, was shot down with his crew in June 1944 and was killed. Jones lived with several aunts and uncles in Birmingham during his school days and was very well looked after. He recalled happy summer days when he was able to cycle out to the home of a paternal uncle, Jack Jones, who, with his wife Lucy, lived in the country near Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. He Spent his holidays with them and these visits sparked off his great love of plants and flowers and lifelong interest in gardening.
Sanskrit Mahākāvyas based on the Mahābhārata
