John Maneschi was born in Italy, his father Italian, his mother Australian. At the age of sixteen Maneschi moved to Australia with his family. Following his high school and university education in Australia, Maneschi worked as an electrical engineer in England, where he met an Australian woman he had known from university. The couple were married in Milan in 1958 and then moved to the United States, where lived for fifteen years, followed by a move to Belgium for a further three years, before returning to Australia. Maneschi retired in 1988 and in 2007 his autobiographical narrative of his childhood experiences of war in Italy was published by Ginninderra Press.
