Patrick White
Patrick White, (1912-90). Australian novelist and writer. White was brought up on his father’s sheep farm in Australia but educated mainly in England. After graduating from Cambridge he settled in London and began to write, finding success with his first published novel, Happy Valley (1939). During World War II he served with RAF intelligence in the. Mediterranean and Middle East. He returned to live in Australia in 1948. The novels that established White as his country’s leading imaginative writer appeared in the later 1950s and early 1960s. The Tree of Man (1955) was followed by Voss (1957), an epic tale of a German immigrant in 19th-century Australia, and Riders in the Chariot (1961). White also had a number of plays produced in the 1960s. His later novels include A Fringe of Leaves (1976) and The Twyborn Affair (1980). In his old age White became an outspoken advocate of complete ‘ Australian independence from Britain. In 1988 he led protests against bicentennial celebrations of European settlement in Australia.
