Rodney Hall was born in England on November 18, 1935. After World War II, he migrated to Australia with his family. At the age of 16, he left school in Brisbane, but eventually graduated from the University of Queensland in 1971. He has written collections of poetry, biographies, novels, and scripts for both television and radio. His works include Penniless till Doomsday, Popeye Never Told You: Childhood Memories of the War, and The Day We Had Hitler Home. He has won numerous awards including the Grace Leven Poetry Prize for A Soapbox Omnibus, the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction for Captivity Captive, the Miles Franklin Award for Just Relations and… for The Grisly Wife, and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for The Second Bridegroom and Love without Hope. In 1990, he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to literature.