Donald G. Payne
British writer (1924-2018)
Donald Gordon Payne (3 January 1924 – 22 August 2018) was an English author, most famous for his 1959 novel, Walkabout. Payne was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1962.
Biography
Donald Gordon Payne was born in Denmark Hill in southeast London. His father, Francis Payne, was from New Zealand and had served with the ANZACs in World War I, and his mother was Evelyn Rodgers, who had served as a nurse in World War I. As a child he travelled with his parents to New Zealand and Australia. He went to school at Dulwich College Preparatory, and then to Charterhouse School.
Payne enlisted in 1943 and served with the Fleet Air Arm as a pilot flying Fairey Swordfish during World War II, escorting convoys across the Atlantic and to Russia.
After the war, he took Honours in History at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. After graduating, he worked for publishing firms as an editor, in sales, and as a ghostwriter. In 1953, he had his first book published, Dorset Harbours under his own name. In 1947, he married Barbara Back, with whom he had four sons and one daughter.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Donald G. Payne” as british writer (1924-2018). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as british writer (1924-2018). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q331593. VIAF identifies the subject as 282606376. The Library of Congress control number is n82019479. 3 of 8 selected statements include explicit references; 5 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924, 2018, 1959 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Donald G. Payne” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.