While at Bembridge he learned his skills in wood working, engraving and printing, as well as becoming passionate about building and sailing boats.
However, he found the new Le Corbusier style of Modern Architecture unappealing, preferring to honour continuity with the past in his designs.
Posted to Scapa Flow, Orkney and placed in charge of the engineers' drawing office, he designed a temporary cinema.
[2] It was also on Orkney that he encountered three rare houses on Hoy designed by William Lethaby, and his interest in and study of these led him to become one of the most respected authorities in arts and crafts domestic architecture.
When the war ended, he taught at the Architectural Association but resigned when the director objected to him telling the students about Webb and Lethaby "because you will undermine their confidence in the Modern Movement.
National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C467/12) with John Brandon-Jones in 1997 for its Architects Lives' collection held by the British Library.
Voysey : architect & designer 1857-1941' exhibition publication with the Art Gallery & Museums and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton Published by Lund Humphries (1978).