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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This article considers the 'secret life' of two Australians who worked for brief periods in intelligence and transmuted aspects of their experience in stories they subsequently told. Herbert Dyce Murphy's depictions of himself as a 'lady spy' in Europe in the early 1900s came to influence Australia's premier novelist Patrick White in the characterisation of his homosexual protagonist in White's novel The Twyborn Affair (1979). For Dyce Murphy and White, as for W H Auden and others, the image of the spy held maginative appeal as a way of projecting the necessary disguises, subterfuges and possibilities that a life of secrecy entailed.' (Author's abstract)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 16 Feb 2011 15:38:34
http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/australian-studies/article/viewFile/1746/2121
The Secret Life of Spies and Novelists : Herbert Dyce Murphy and Patrick White
Australian Studies
Australian Studies
Subjects:
- The Twyborn Affair 1979 single work novel
- The Spy Who Loved Children : The Enigma of Herbert Dyce Murphy 1997 single work biography
- Lady Spy, Gentleman Explorer : The Life of Herbert Dyce Murphy : The Most Extraordinary Australian You've Never Heard Of 2001 single work biography
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