A Crooked Sixpence

One of the most distinguished journalists to have taken the boat from Australia, MURRAY SAYLE had started work as a copy boy with the Bulletin while still at Sydney University, later becoming a reporter for the Sydney Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror. In 1952 he moved to London where he worked in Fleet Street until 1956. At that time he “decided it was time to do some serious thinking and light starving and get used to not having a job”. He went to Paris and wrote his first novel. A CROOKED SIXPENCE, first published in 1960, was the result. From 1960 to 1973 he was a war correspondent for The Times and the Sunday Times, covering Vietnam, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, India-Pakistan and Bolivia. His journalistic scoops included interviews with Che Guevara and with Kim Philby. Then he moved to the Far East, becoming Asian Editor of Newsweek before moving to Japan as a freelance. He returned to Australia in 2004.