Peter Allen Ryan MM (4 September 1923 – 13 December 2015) was a newspaper columnist, author,

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

spy, director of

Melbourne University Press Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) is the book publishing arm of the University of Melbourne. The press is currently a member of the Association of University Presses. History MUP was founded in 1922 as Melbourne University Press to sell text ...

and an officer of the Victorian Supreme Court.

Life and career

The son of the

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

veteran and VFL footballer Emmett Ryan, Peter Ryan was educated at Malvern Grammar School, near his home in Glen Iris in

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

's eastern suburbs. He left school at 16 to work in the Victorian public service, but as soon as he turned 18 he enlisted in the army to fight in

. He served as an intelligence operative behind enemy lines in New Guinea for eighteen months, much of the time alone. He was awarded the

Military Medal The Military Medal (MM) was a military decoration awarded to personnel of the British Army and other arms of the British Armed Forces, armed forces, and to personnel of other Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth countries, below commissioned o ...

and

mentioned in despatches To be mentioned in dispatches (or despatches) describes a member of the armed forces whose name appears in an official report written by a superior officer and sent to the high command, in which their gallant or meritorious action in the face of t ...

. His 1959 book ''Fear Drive My Feet'' is his famous account of his experiences. On his return to Australia, he served under Alf Conlon at the

Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs The Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs (DORCA) was a mysterious and difficult-to-categorise think tank and possibly an intelligence organisation within the Australian Army during World War II. Set up and headed by the charismatic Alf Conl ...

.Sligo, G. 2012.''The Backroom Boys: Conlon and Army's Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs, 1942–46'', Big Sky Publishing. He studied at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

from 1946, graduating BA with

honours Honour (Commonwealth English) or honor (American English; see spelling differences) is a quality of a person that is of both social teaching and personal ethos, that manifests itself as a code of conduct, and has various elements such as valo ...

. He married in 1947, and worked as a freelance writer, then in advertising, then as Public Relations Manager with ICI in Melbourne. He was Director of

from 1962 to 1989. He wrote about these years in his memoir ''Final Proof'' (2010). In the September 1993 edition of '' Quadrant'' he wrote an attack on the six-volume ''History of Australia'' by Manning Clark, which Melbourne University Press had published between 1962 and 1987. Among other things he said Clark's history was "over a million printed English words, probably unrivalled in their power to combine the ''non sequitur'' with the anticlimax, and to wring the last drops from a series of foregone conclusions". The article aroused considerable controversy, which Ryan dealt with in a subsequent article in ''Quadrant'' in October 1994. He wrote a monthly column for ''Quadrant'' from March 1994 to October 2015. A selection of these columns was published in 2011 under the title ''It Strikes Me''. He died on 13 December 2015 at the age of 92.

Bibliography

Books

* * * * * * * ''Black Bonanza: A Landslide of Gold'' (1991) (on the gold rush at Mount Kare in Papua New Guinea) * ''Lines of Fire: Manning Clark & Other Writings'' (1997) * ''Brief Lives: Biographical Glimpses of Ben Chifley, Paul Hasluck, A.D. Hope and Others'' (2004) * ''Final Proof: Memoirs of a Publisher'' (2010) * ''It Strikes Me: Essays by Peter Ryan 1994–2010'' (2011)

"Ryan" columns in ''Quadrant''

Book reviews

References

External links

Publisher's biography
at Duffy & Snellgrove
Publisher's biography
at

Text Publishing Text Publishing is an Australian publisher of fiction and non-fiction, based in Melbourne, Victoria. Company background Text Media was founded in Melbourne in 1990 by Diana Gribble and Eric Beecher, along with designer Chong Weng Ho and oth ...

Service record

in the Australian about fellow DORCA alumnus Ida Leeson
Five tributes to Peter Ryan in ''Quadrant'' March 2016
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ryan, Peter Australian columnists 1923 births 2015 deaths Australian essayists 20th-century Australian male writers Australian military personnel of World War II Australian publishers (people) Australian recipients of the Military Medal Australian male essayists Quadrant (magazine) people University of Melbourne alumni Academic staff of the University of Melbourne 20th-century Australian public servants Australian memoirists Australian literary critics People from Glen Iris, Victoria Public servants from Melbourne Military personnel from Melbourne Writers from Melbourne