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Robert Victor Macklin is an Australian author and journalist.

Macklin was born in 1941 and began his writing career for the Brisbane Courier Mail, later moving to The Age in Melbourne and then The Canberra Times in Canberra. In 1967 he became press secretary to Deputy Prime Minister John McEwen shortly before the death of Harold Holt when McEwen briefly became Prime Minister. In 1974 while working in the Philippines at the Asian Development Bank he began writing both fiction and non-fiction books, beginning with the novel The Queenslander. Awarded a Commonwealth Writer’s Fellowship he returned to Australia in 1975 and wrote The Paper Castle (1978) and Juryman (1980), adapted by MGM to the film, Storyville (1994) starring James Spader and Jason Robards.

His non-fiction work includes 100 Great Australians, The Secret Life of Jesus, Jacka VC — Australian Hero, Fire in the Blood — The epic tale of Frank Gardiner and Australia’s other bushrangers, Bravest — How Some of Australia’s Greatest War Heroes Won Their Medals, the memoir War Babies, and Kevin Rudd: The Biography.

With Peter Thompson he co-authored The Battle of Brisbane, The Man Who Died Twice — the life and adventures of Morrison of Peking (re-issued as MORRISON OF CHINA), Kill The Tiger, Keep off the Skyline and The Big Fella — the rise and rise of BHP Billiton.

He is a graduate of the screen writing course of the Australian Film Television and Radio School and has written and directed documentary films in 32 countries of Asia and the South Pacific. With producer Andrew Pike he has written the screenplay Barefoot on Australia’s only Chinese bushranger, Sam Poo.

Married to Wendy Macklin, he has two sons, Rob and Ben and currently lives in Canberra.

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