George Johnston

George Henry Johnston OBE was an Australian journalist, war correspondent and novelist, best known for My Brother Jack. His second wife and literary collaborator was Charmian Clift. George Henry Johnston was born in Melbourne, Victoria and spent his childhood in the family home in Elsternwick and was educated in local secondary schools before taking up an apprenticeship as a lithographer. He was subsequently taken on as a journalist for the Melbourne Argus newspaper. He achieved a certain fame due to his dispatches as a correspondent during World War II. With his second wife, Charmian Clift... he was posted to London as a European correspondent. In 1951, Albert Arlen tried to engage Johnston's services as writer of his musical The Sentimental Bloke, but he was not interested. Johnston abandoned his journalism career in 1954 and moved with Clift to the Greek island of Hydra, where he began writing full-time and took part in the island's circle of international artists, including Canadian poet Leonard Cohen and Scandinavian novelists Axel Jensen and Göran Tunström. While there he contracted tuberculosis. He returned to live in Sydney in 1964.
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