John’s drawings of his young sons are among his finest, most sought-after works, and he can be claimed as one of the best draughtsman of children that has ever lived. Having grown up by the seaside he had a life-long love of the sea, and was a strong, keen swimmer. In Chiaroscuro he recalled how, as a boy, the ‘beaches, caves, sand dunes and burrows in the neighbourhood of Tenby provided ideal playgrounds […]. Long days were spent in and out of the sea at Lydstep, Monkstone and other lonely spots along the coast.’ He remembered making long, solitary explorations down precipitous cliffs ‘to narrow virgin beaches of wet shingle.’ He often stripped off his clothes and ran naked in the dunes.

Although he could be a stern, rather distant father (as his own had been), John loved his children, and was keen they should not be brought up conventional Edwardian boys. He frequently took them on holiday to the seaside—Provence, Normandy, Dorset and Wales—where, like him, they ran naked. In his memoir, The Seventh Child, Romilly John remembered how, as a little boy of nearly four, when the family was living at Martigues in the summer of 1910, the sea was ‘something mysterious and terrifying.’ Even though he spent the greater part of each day in the sea, he admitted it was many years before he learnt to swim.