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Paul Chester Jerome Brickhill (20 December 1916 – 23 April 1991) was an Australian writer, whose World War II books were turned into popular movies.

He was born in Melbourne, Victoria and educated at North Sydney Boys High School. Afterwards, Brickhill worked as a journalist.

During the war he joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Under the Empire Air Training Scheme, Brickhill undertook advanced training as a fighter pilot in Canada and the United Kingdom, before being assigned to No. 92 Squadron RAF, a Spitfire unit with the Desert Air Force. In 1943, Brickhill was shot down over Tunisia and became a prisoner of war.

While imprisoned at Stalag Luft III, in Germany, Brickhill was involved in work towards the "Great Escape". He did not take part in tunnelling or the escape itself, due to claustrophobia.

After the war, Brickhill wrote the first major account of the escape in The Great Escape (1950), bringing the incident to a wide public attention. He went on to write two other best-selling war books: The Dam Busters, the story of Operation Chastise and the destruction of dams in the Ruhr valley by No. 617 Squadron RAF, and Reach for the Sky, the story of Battle of Britain ace Douglas Bader.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Paul Brickhill", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0