Honour's Mimic

Charmian Clift was born in the coastal town of Kiama, New South Wales, on 31 August 1923. After serving as a lieutenant in the Australian Army, she joined the staff of the Melbourne Argus newspaper, and in 1947 married fellow journalist George Johnston. The next year, the couple’s collaborative novel High Valley won the Sydney Morning Herald prize. Fleeing the political claustrophobia of Australia under the Menzies government, in 1952 Charmian and George headed to London. Two years later, they escaped even further, to the Greek islands, where over the next decade they raised three children and created a legend. During this period, Clift wrote the memoirs Mermaid Singing and Peel Me A Lotus, and her two novels, Honour’s Mimic and Walk to the Paradise Gardens. After the family returned to Australia in 1964, Charmian Clift began writing a weekly column that appeared in the Melbourne Herald and the Sydney Morning Herald. Charmian Clift died in 1969.

Nadia Wheatley is the editor of Sneaky Little Revolutions: Selected essays of Charmian Clift and The End of the Morning: The never-before-published novel by Charmian Clift. She is also the author of The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. Described by critic Peter Craven as ‘one of the greatest Australian biographies’, this was the Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year, 2001, and won the NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize (2002). After twenty years it remains the classic account of the life and work of this transformational Australian writer. Nadia Wheatley’s other works include the award-winning memoir Her Mother’s Daughter and Radicals Remembering the Sixties, written in partnership with Meredith Burgmann.