Always questioning his surroundings and seeking answers to why things happened, he moved to the African kingdom of Swaziland in the early seventies where he spent three years working as a teacher.

Kevin returned to the North of Ireland in 1975 and took up a teaching post in Portadown and continued to teach before retiring in 2000.

Now 63-years-old, Kevin has released his first book, In the Shadows of Giants; the telling of the social history of the Belfast ship yards and how it affected and was turn affected by the religious and cultural beliefs of both Protestants and Catholics in the North of Ireland.

Like so many successful and learned people, Kevin came from humble beginnings. He was born in the old City and County Hospital in December 1944 and was baptised two days later in St. Eugene's Cathedral.
As a young boy, Kevin shared a small three roomed house in Deanery Street in the Brandywell along with his parents, widowed grandfather, uncle Dan and four aunts.

"My earliest memory is growing up Deanery Street," said Kevin. "Housing was very poor at this time and any building that was going on was probably for the Americans in the war (World War II] effort.

"Like most people of the time, when my mother and father got married they moved in with in-laws. The house in Deanery Street was just about a three bedroom house and we had the smallest room in the house which was called the box room.

"By the time my first brother was born in 1948 we were fairly high on the list for a house in Creggan. We amongst the first people to move to Creggan and we got a house in Dunmore Gardens.

"When we moved there there was still a lot work going on. It was still very much the countryside and when you got up in the morning it would be no surprise to see a horse grazing in the street."

Rosemount Boys Primary School was where Kevin commenced his lifelong quest for knowledge. He recalled the school being so overcrowded that the teachers had to use a shift system to ensure that every pupil was able to attend class.

Kevin also explained that, at the time, he was friends with BBC Radio Ulster presenter and fellow Derry man, Gerry Anderson. After school was over both boys would walk in town and treat themselves to the "second matinee" at many of Derry's picture houses.

"My memories of the primary school (Rosemount Boys] were not too bad. You would always have been encouraged to do your best and I made friends then that I would still regard as friends today.

"One of my friends at school was Gerry Anderson and for a period of two years we go straight from school to the picture houses.

From Monday to Thursday and sometimes Friday we would go to the second matinee and if it was good we would sit and wait for the next film to come on. I think that that was one of the main reasons why Gerry showed such an interest in old black and white films."

After completing the 11+ Kevin attended St. Columb's College where he encountered harsh treatment from priests. Attending the school at the same time as Kevin was both composer Phil Coulter and Nobel Prize winner, Seamus Heaney.

At the young age of 16 Kevin left St. Columb's and applied for a job working for the Civil Service in London. Soon after he realised that he was not suited to the lifestyle of post-war London and moved back home where he completed his A-levels at St. Columb's.

"When I was 14 or 15 I remember I started to look at what was going around me and started to ask questions. At the time Derry was full of cinemas and band halls - it was a great place at that time for brass and flute bands. There was a real social circuit and but it was not at all sophisticated.

"I then did my O-levels and moved to South Kensington in London to work for the Civil Service. Although it was a sophisticated place, I was sleeping in a hostel with six to a room and perhaps now there is a Bentley parked outside but in my day it was bikes."

He continued: "Moving to London was a real eye opener for me. It showed me that there was much more to the world than Derry. It was at this time that I started to think that the Catholics in Northern Ireland were guilty of accepting their fate without challenging it.

"My own experience of this happened when I applied for a job with the Corporation. The man who was interviewing me asked me my name and where I lived and jotted down 'Kevin Johnston' and 'Creggan'. But as soon as I told him I went to school at St. Columb's he put his pen back in his pocket, asked all the other questions but did not write anything else down. What was fascinating was that I did not object."

On completion of his A-levels, Kevin moved to Trench House in Belfast where he studied to be a teacher. One of the first people he met when he arrived was Seamus Heaney. Kevin immediately struck up a friendship with the poet and was encouraged to write.

Kevin explained that although he was good with words, he sometimes tried to over complicated with what he was trying to say in his writings.

It was through his acquaintance with Heaney that he soon realised that the ultimate objective to writing was conveying ideas as simply as possible.

Kevin successfully qualified as a teacher and took up his first teaching post in Claudy in 1967. The following year he married his wife Maura who came to work at the same school as Kevin in Claudy.

The newly married couple had two children in the early seventies but seeing the implosion of the Troubles, they decided to move to Swaziland in 1972 where Kevin taught for three years.

"I was living in the Waterside at the time and my mother was living on the city side so when I wanted to visit I had to cross the bridge and most of the time it was not as simple as that.

"I got fed up when I saw my son rubbing at his nose after we walked into a pocket of tear gas. I couldn't bear the fact that my children were going to have to grow up in a situation like this so when a teaching position in Swaziland presented itself I applied.

"When I was in Africa I was immersed in a completely new and different culture and I started to question what the whole thing back home was all about. I became fascinated with the differences between Protestants and Catholics and this is something that has stayed with me and it was a very important part of my life."

On his return to the North of Ireland, Kevin and his family moved to Maura's native Moneymore. Soon after, Kevin started teaching at a school in Portadown where he recalled many of his students had experienced loss and misery at the hands of the Troubles.

"Whilst teaching in Portadown, excessive violence became normality. It's hard to talk about it as excessive violence when compared to what was going on all over the country but I remember one of the boys I was teaching, his brother had both his arms and legs broken and was tied to a mattress and thrown into the River Bann to drown.

"Another one of the boys was making a bird cage and he knew of a place he could get some wire. The place where the wire was booby trapped and he was killed.

"I had 20 youngsters in my class in 1975 and five of them had had either a brother or a sister murdered."

In 2000 Kevin retired from teaching and met a man called John McCann. John was making a documentary on the history of the Belfast shipyards and asked Kevin to come on board. Gill & Macmillan became aware of the documentary and approached the two men with the idea of writing a book.

In the Shadow of Giants is Kevin's first book and opening chapter examines the relationship between the Irish Potato Famine and Belfast, the building of the Titanic and depicts what life was like working in the city after World War II. The latter stages of the book documents the conflict amongst the Protestant and Catholic workers in
considerable detail right up to 1970.

"I thoroughly enjoyed researching the book. The book has so many stories about so many different people in it. The thing I enjoyed the most was trying to find out more about the small accidents that happen that cause major things to take root."

Kevin hopes to write a book on how Derry developed from a predominantly Protestant settlement to its place in modernity as a Nationalist stronghold.

He concluded the interview by explaining that he does not see himself as a historian in the traditional sense but explained that he wants to give his readers the opportunity to come to their own conclusions.

"I am not a historian in the sense that I don't go and look at original documents. What I try to do is put peoples' stories together in nonbiased way and present the reader with the chance to make up their own minds."

It was hard to come away from the meeting with Kevin without feeling a degree of inspiration. Here was a man who challenged all that he knew and queried his surroundings and influences constantly.

n In the Shadows of Giants is published by Gill & Macmillan and went on release on Friday. The book is priced €24.99/£19.99 and can be purchased in all main stream book shops and online at www.amazon.co.uk