Denis Warner

Who is Denis Warner?

Denis Ashton Warner OBE CMG was an Australian journalist, war correspondent and historian.

Warner was born in New Norfolk in Tasmania's Derwent Valley. He attended The Hutchins School, where he was school captain, before embarking on a career in journalism. He began working for the Mercury as a copy boy in the late 1930s before being shifted to Melbourne to work for the Herald. After his return from war service in the Middle East, he came to the attention of Sir Keith Murdoch, who dispatched him to Asia with the directive to "tell us how it is". Following the war's end, he worked for Reuters and the Australian Associated Press as head of the Tokyo bureau, from whence he reported on Japan's post-war experience and interviewed General Douglas MacArthur. He married Herald reporter Peggy Hick in 1945.

In 1949 he was appointed Far Eastern Correspondent for the Herald and the London Daily Telegraph, becoming a freelancer in 1955. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1956 and an Associate Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 1957. He wrote for a number of international news magazines, including the Reporter, Look and the Atlantic.