Peter Allen Ryan was a newspaper columnist, author, World War II spy, director of Melbourne University Press and an officer of the Victorian Supreme Court.

Fear Drive My Feet is his famous account of his World War II experiences in New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

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He was an intelligence operative behind enemy lines in New Guinea. On his return to Australia, he served under Alf Conlon

Alfred Conlon

Colonel Alfred Austin Joseph Conlon the creative force behind, and head of the Australian World War II Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs ....

 at the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs

Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs

DORCA, the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs was a mysterious and difficult to categorise think tank and possibly intelligence organisation within the Australian Army in WWII....

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He was Director of Melbourne University Press from 1962 to 1989. He has written a monthly column for Quadrant

Quadrant (magazine)

Quadrant is an Australian literary and cultural journal. The magazine takes a conservative position on political and social issues, describing itself as sceptical of 'unthinking Leftism, or political correctness, and its "smelly little orthodoxies"'. Quadrant reviews literature, as well as...

 magazine since 1994.

External links

• Publishers biography
  • for Brief Lives
  • homepage
• article in the Australian about fellow DORCA alumus Ida Leeson