Early Life
Hackett, who was nicknamed "Shan", was born in Perth, Western Australia. His Irish Australian father, Sir John Winthrop Hackett (1848–1916), originally from Tipperary, was a newspaper proprietor and politician and his mother was Deborah Drake-Brockman (1887–1965) — later Lady Deborah Hackett, Lady Deborah Moulden and Dr Deborah Buller Murphy — a director of mining companies. John Hackett junior's maternal grandparents were prominent members of Western Australian society: Grace Bussell, famous for rescuing shipwreck survivors as a teenager and Frederick Slade Drake-Brockman, a prominent surveyor and explorer.
He received secondary schooling at Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, after which he travelled to London to study painting at the Central School of Art. He then studied Greats and Modern History at New College, Oxford. As his degree was not good enough for an academic career, Hackett joined the British Army and was commissioned into the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars in 1933, having previously joined the Supplementary Reserve of Officers in 1931.
He served in Mandate Palestine and was mentioned in despatches in 1936 and then with the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force from 1937–1941 and was twice mentioned in despatches.
Read more about this topic: John Hackett (British Army Officer)
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)