Patrick White

Patrick Victor Martindale White was born on May 28, 1912, into a wealthy Australian pastoral dynasty while his parents were visiting London. Raised in Sydney and educated at King's College, Cambridge, White served as an RAF intelligence officer in the Middle East during World War II, where he met his lifelong partner Manoly Lascaris.

Returning to Sydney to farm at Castle Hill, White rejected conventional Australian literary realism, creating visionary, mythic prose exploring human isolation, spiritual grace, and the primeval Australian landscape. In 1973, the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature 'for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature.' He used his Nobel funds to establish the Patrick White Literary Award.