Paul Brickhill was a journalist on The Sun newspaper in Sydney before enlisting in the RAAF during World War II. His plane was shot down over the Tunisian desert in 1943 and he spent the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp that became the setting of his book The Great Escape, written in 1949. His works The Dam Busters, The Great Escape and Reach for the Sky have all been filmed.
He was the cousin of influential comics artist Hart Amos and a lifelong friend of Peter Finch (including appearing in the BBC One profile on Peter Finch (1982), as 'writer and lifelong friend').
Source: 'Paul Brickhill, 74, Author of War Novels' (Obituary), The New York Times,
April 26, 1991. (Sighted 30/3/2012)
