Hugh Lunn has won 3 Walkley Awards and The Age Book of the Year award in 1985 for Vietnam. Hugh Lunn has been a journalist for most of his working life with stints for The Courier-Mail and London’s Daily Mirror. He was a foreign correspondent in Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia for Reuters before joining The Australian newspaper, where he worked from 1971 to 1987.
He has written 12 books – most recently, Lost for Words: Australia’s Lost Language in Words and Stories (2006) – but is best known for his memoirs, which started with Vietnam: A Reporter’s War. Over the Top with Jim, one of Australia’s biggest selling non-fiction books ever, was a significant contribution to Australia’s popular post-WW2 history, and was serialised by ABC Radio on Ian McNamara’s Sunday Australia All Over program in 1991–92 and 1999–2000.
Hugh Lunn is on a mission to bring rich colour back to the Australian language. By exploring the phrases of his early years, Lunn doesn’t simply bring back hundreds of funny, apt, poignant and cutting sayings, he evokes a lost world of Australia; one that anyone, whatever their age, will enjoy.