From Traveller to Traitor: The Life of Wilfred Burchett

By: Tom Heenan

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Synopsis: The radical journalist Wilfred Burchett (1911 - 1983) was persecuted by the Australian government during his lifetime and publicly reviled in print long after his death. After a distinguished wartime career with the London Daily Express, Burchett drifted to the left with the onset of the Cold War. During the Korean and Vietnam wars he was condemned as a traitor for his pro-Communist reports, and denied an Australian passport by successive Liberal governments of the 1950s and 1960s. From Traveller to Traitor is the first scholarly biography of this controversial foreign correspondent. Tom Heenan explores the truth behind Burchett's reports from his travels on the other side of the ideological divide. Using ASIO files from the 1950s to the 1970s, and other archival material, Heenan exposes the insubstantial nature of the allegations of treachery made against Burchett. This book casts valuable new light on an extraordinary Australian whose story is one of the greatest political scandals in the nation's history.