George Johnston was born in Melbourne, Victoria and spent his childhood in the family home in Elsternwick and was educated in local secondary schools before taking up an apprenticeship as a lithographer. He was subsequently taken on as a journalist for the Melbourne Argus newspaper. He achieved a certain fame due to his dispatches as a correspondent during World War II. With his second wife, Charmian Clift he was posted to London as a European correspondent.

In 1951, Albert Arlen tried to engage Johnston's services as writer of his musical The Sentimental Bloke, but he was not interested. Johnston abandoned his journalism career in 1954 and moved with Clift to the Greek islands, where he began writing full-time. While there he contracted tuberculosis and returned to live in Sydney in 1964.

Johnston is best known for his trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels: My Brother Jack, Clean Straw for Nothing and A Cartload of Clay. He was appointed an Officer (OBE) of the Order of the British Empire in 1970 for services to literature. He is the father of the poet Martin Johnston.

Novels

• Death Takes Small Bites (1948)
• The Moon at Perigee (1948)
• High Valley (1949)
• The Big Chariot (1953)
• The Cyprian Woman (1955)
• The Sponge Divers (1955)
• The Saracen Shadow (1957)
• Twelve Girls in the Garden (1957)
• The Man Made of Tin (1958)
• The Darkness Outside (1959)
• The Myth is Murder (1959)
• Closer to the Sun (1960)
• A Wake for Mourning (1962)
• The Far Road (1962)
• My Brother Jack (1964)
• The Far Face of the Moon (1965)
• Clean Straw for Nothing (1969)
• A Cartload of Clay (1971)

Non-Fiction

• Battle of the Seaways: From the Athenia to the Bismarck (1941)
• Grey Gladiator: H.M.A.S. Sydney with the British Mediterranean Fleet (1941)
• Australia at War (1942)
• New Guinea Diary (1942)
• Pacific Partner (1944)
• Skyscrapers in the Mist (1946)
• Journey Through Tomorrow (1947)
• The Australians (1966)

Edited

• Images in Aspic (1965)