The Temporary Gentleman

Jack McNulty is a “temporary gentleman,” an Irishman whose commission in the British Army in the Second World War was never made permanent. In 1957, in his lodgings in Accra, he sets out to write his story. He is an ordinary man, both petty and heroic, but he has seen extraordinary things. He has wandered the world—as a soldier, an engineer, a UN observer—following his childhood ambition to better himself.

The Temporary Gentleman is a heartbreaking portrait of one man’s life and his last bid for freedom from the savage realities of the past and from himself.