Godfrey Blunden

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Godfrey Blunden (1906-1996) was an Australian journalist and author.

Godfrey Blunden was born Melbourne. At the age of 20 he became Editor of the first "Wireless" magazine in England. Employed by the Sydney Daily Telegraph he was sent to England in 1941 and covered the Battle of Britain before being sent to Russia in 1942 where he covered the Stalingrad and Kharkov forces. In 1943 he covered the battles in Holland and Germany whilst attached to US Ninth Airforce and the US Ninth Army. His World War 2 dispatches were published in the London Evening Standard^[1].

After the war his wife joined him in Paris. He worked for Time for 14 years, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction in 1953. He left in 1965 to concentrate on novels and non-fiction. He subsequently divorced his wife an married a Polish girl and settled in Paris, then Venice and later in Vence, France.^[2] He never returned to Australia and was a permanent expatriate and an exile, but he was a passionate Australian and never gave up his close bond with the country through exchanging letters and receiving visits from his extended family and later devoting most of his writing to Australian subjects and themes.

Blunden authored several novels, including A Room on the Route and The Time of the Assassins.^[3] His novel Charco Harbour is a modernist historical fiction on Captain James Cook and his journey along the Australian coast in 1768. He died in Paris in 1996.^[4]

[edit] Select Works

No More Reality, 1935
A Room on the Route, 1951
The Time of the Assassins, 1953
The Looking Glass Conference, 1957
Charco Harbour, 1968

[edit] Non Fiction Select Works

Australia and Her People,1960<
Impressionists and impressionism (with Maria Blunden),1972
Norman Lindsay Watercolours. Fifteen Reproductions in Colour from Original Watercolours with an Appreciation of the Medium By Norman Lindsay and a Survey of the Artist's Life and Work, 1973

[edit] References

^ A kind of exile: Godfrey Blunden-an Australian in Paris
^ Blundens in Australia
^ [preface to CHARCO HARBOUR, Godfrey Blunden,1968, Penguin]
^ A kind of exile: Godfrey Blunden-an Australian in Paris

http://www.sup.usyd.edu.au/projects_cal_authors.html
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-1562260_ITM
http://www.family.jwsmith.com.au/family_history_jws/jws_blundens/jws_blundens_in_australia.htm
A kind of exile: Godfrey Blunden--an Australian in Paris by Patrick Buckridge: An biographical article from The Journal of Australian Studies, University of Queensland Press.

Persondata
NAME	Blunden, Godfrey
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Expatriate Australian writer
DATE OF BIRTH	1906
PLACE OF BIRTH	Melbourne, Australia
DATE OF DEATH	1996
PLACE OF DEATH	Paris, France