Background
Godfrey Blunden was born in Melbourne.
Godfrey Blunden was born in Melbourne.
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 1944-1945 he covered the battles in the Netherlands and Germany whilst attached to the United States Ninth Airforce and the United States Ninth Army. His World War 2 dispatches were published in the London Evening Standard.
He left Time-Life in 1965 to concentrate on novels and non-fiction.
The Blundens settled in Paris and later in Vence, France. 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. 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.
(Looking-Glass Conference, The, by Blunden, Godfrey)