Murray Sayle

Murray Sayle
Murray Sayle, c. 1970
Born	Murray William Sayle (1926-01-01)1 January 1926 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Status	married
Died	19 September 2010(2010-09-19) (aged 84) Sydney
Education	University of Sydney
Occupation	journalist, novelist, adventurer
Spouse(s)	(2) Maria Theresa von Stockert (marriage dissolved); (3) Jennifer Philips (three children)
Children	Matthew, Alexander, and Malindi

Murray William Sayle OAM (1 January 1926 – 19 September 2010) was an Australian journalist, novelist and adventurer.

A native of Sydney, Sayle moved to London in 1952. He was a foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s. During his long career he covered wars in Vietnam, Pakistan and the Middle East, accompanied an expedition on its climb of Mount Everest, sailed solo across the Atlantic Ocean, was the first reporter to interview double agent Kim Philby after his defection to Russia, and trekked through the Bolivian jungle in search for Che Guevara. He resigned from The Sunday Times in 1972 after the newspaper refused to publish an investigative piece he wrote about the Bloody Sunday shootings of 26 unarmed protesters in Northern Ireland.

Sayle moved to Hong Kong in 1972 and to Japan in 1975. Altogether he remained in Japan for nearly 30 years, writing about that country for various publications, principally The Independent Magazine, The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books.

Born in Earlwood, a Sydney suburb, in 1926, Sayle was the son of a railway executive. He attended the Canterbury Boys' High School before enrolling at the University of Sydney. At university, Sayle studied psychology and worked for the student magazine, Honi Soit. After leaving without taking a degree, Sayle worked as a newspaper reporter for The Sydney Daily Telegraph, the Cairns Post, and The Daily Mirror. He also worked for six years as a radio reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.