John Samuel Synge (1906-1982) was born in Dublin, the son of Rev. Samuel Synge and Mary Harmar. The senior Synges were doctors with the Trinity College Dublin Mission in China returning to Ireland by 1911. John Synge was educated at St Columba’s College, Dublin, and Clare College, Cambridge. He won a Rugby Blue in 1927 and made one international appearance for Ireland in 1929 in a fixture against Scotland at Lansdowne Road. He joined the Colonial Service shortly thereafter and was posted to Northern Nigeria as a District Officer. Having contracted cerebral malaria, Synge returned to Britain during the Second World War, being shipwrecked twice on his journey back. He married Frances Margaret Arnold (1921-2010), a widowed nurse, in 1944; they had three sons. Synge eventually became a sheep farmer and settled in County Wicklow in the early 1950s. Source: Lanto Synge, ‘Telling Threads’ (privately published, 2015).