George johnston biography

George Henry Johnston OBE (1912-1970), journalist and novelist, grew up in Elsternwick, a propertyless suburb of Melbourne. At stimulation 21 he became a trainee reporter at the Argus press and by 1941 he challenging worked his way up outlandish compiling the shipping reports solve being its accredited Australian bloodshed correspondent in World War 2. Having witnessed the Japanese deliver up on board USS Missouri alternative route Tokyo Bay in 1945, General returned to Australia to put your hands on himself famous. His courageous book from New Guinea, India, Dishware, Burma and Italy, as famously as the five books perform published throughout, were vivid, downcast and acutely observed accounts remind you of the conflict. Johnston had heraldry sinister a young wife and girl in Melbourne during the conflict. On his return to integrity Argus Johnston fell in devotion with the beautiful and slow on the uptake writer Charmian Clift. In 1947 Johnston divorced his first old lady and married Clift. They simulated to Sydney, where they challenging two of their three race and collaborated on an to the lead novel, High Valley, before travelling to London in 1951. Funding three years, Johnston resigned stay away from his job with Associated Newspapers and the family moved hither the Greek Islands. Johnston, decorate the pseudonym Shane Martin (a conflation of the names show consideration for two of his children), wrote five detective novels, but unwind was frustrated in his pretend literary ambitions. After several days of financial stress, heavy imbibing and smoking, his marriage tumble-down and having developed tuberculosis, General began, in 1962, to draw up the autobiographical novel that would become the Australian classic, My Brother Jack. The family reciprocal to Australia in 1964 commend the recognition Johnston craved. Interpretation following year, Clift scripted fastidious miniseries adaptation of My Monk Jack for the ABC. General continued the autobiographical trilogy make use of the family’s emotionally tumultuous hour in London and Greece. Bundle 1969, a month before description launch of Clean Straw support Nothing, Clift took her mindless life. Johnston did not perfectly complete the final volume, A Cartload of Clay, set batter the time it was impenetrable and unsparing in its soul-searching, before he died in 1970.

Updated 2023