Marcus Clarke

Who is Marcus Clarke?

Marcus Carlyle Clarke was an Australian medical doctor who at the age of 23 was appointed District Surgeon, North Borneo, based at Kudat after answering an advertisement in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1938. After an eventful year in Kudat he was transferred to Sandakan as Port Health Officer, then to Keningau as District Surgeon, Beaufort and the Interior.

It was here that Clarke was stationed as tensions rose in Southeast Asia in 1940-1941. Clarke recorded his experiences of capture, working as a doctor under the Japanese in Brunei and his eventual incarceration in Batu Lintang camp, an internment camp in Kuching, Sarawak under the pen-name Derwent Kell, in the book A Doctor's Borneo, In Peace and War published in 1984. He wrote under a pseudonym, because he said his "real name was pre-empted by a well-known professional writer", a reference to Australian author Marcus Clarke.

This is one of the very few accounts of life under the Japanese in Brunei.