Who was the children's author who doubled as a propagandist for Britain in World War II? Read The Gremlins.

Who was the British novelist who created a famous movie spy, yet worked on even more amazing missions himself? Read The Name's Fleming - Ian Fleming.

Who was the popular British/Australian novelist, who once worked as an aircraft designer, and also enjoyed racing a Jaguar XK140? Read about Mr. Norway. For more detail, also see more about his Racing career, and the movie On The Beach.

Who was a dancer and movie star in the 1930s that invented the technology used in the most modern mobile phones? Read about Delilah and the Mobile Phone.

Read on for some current news about Australian author Peter Pinney...

Australian Authors

You can read about the Australian author Ion Idriess in the separate Idriess pages. There are other Australian authors worth talking about as well. I received an email from Sava Pinney, the daughter of Peter Pinney, on 5 Jan 2000:

I have just stumbled on your [site] out of the blue after doing a search on the name of my dad, Peter Pinney... a popular Australian travel/adventure writer in the 1950's. Dad had around 12 books published over the years, most well known probably: Dust on my Shoes, Who Wanders Alone and Anywhere but Here. Later he wrote for television and published his war diaries... with UQP [University of Queensland Press]. Just thought I'd say hi... If anyone is interested in Dad's works, please feel free to contact me.

I highly recommend Pinney's books from the two I have read. Dust on my Shoes (1952) is an amazing travelogue of Pinney's overland trip from Greece to Burma, through war zones and in and out of all sorts of troubles. The Devil's Garden (1992) is from his 1945 Solomon Islands War diary, based on Pinney's experience there as a commando. The good people at Ozbook have a Pinney bibliography.

Sava has been in touch again in Oct 2004:

Thank you for keeping my email on your site, I've had numerous contacts from people around the world about dad, people who knew him or loved his books. I try to reply to all of them, though it takes me a while sometimes to check my Hotmail account. Anyway, I thought you might also like to know there is a project on the ABC web site based on dad's journey in Dust On My Shoes. It's quite new, and still in progress. The logistics are huge, as the production company is sending two young travellers to retrace the journey.

I highly recommend a look at the ABC site above. They have a great animated map of the original journey. The trip through Baghdad and Kabul this time could be even more perilous than it was in the 40s - as Sava has suggested, it sounds more like an SAS job than a TV program - Survivor in a real war zone?

Peter Pinney also wrote for Australian TV - he wrote the war components of The Sullivans, and episodes of Carson's Law and The Flying Doctors. Read more in a recent interview with his wife, Estelle, also a writer, at Readersvoice.com.

For more information on Peter Pinney, Sava can be contacted at sava_pinney@hotmail.com, or contact me.

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