13 Facts About Walter Murdoch

Sir Walter Logie Forbes Murdoch, was a prominent Australian academic and essayist famous for his intelligence and wit.

Walter Murdoch was a founding professor of English and former Chancellor of the University of Western Australia in Perth, Western Australia.

Walter Murdoch was born on 17 September 1874 at Rosehearty, Scotland to Rev James Walter Murdoch, minister of the Free Church of Scotland, and his wife Helen, nee Garden, and he was the youngest of their 14 children.

Walter Murdoch spent his first decade at Rosehearty and in England and France, and arrived with his family in Melbourne in 1884.

On 22 December 1897 at Hawthorn, Melbourne, Walter Murdoch married Violet Catherine Hughston, a teacher.

In 1911, Walter Murdoch was passed over in favour of an overseas applicant, Sir Robert Wallace, for the re-created independent chair of English at Melbourne University.

Walter Murdoch spent the next year as a full-time member of the Argus literary staff and was then selected as a founding professor of UWA.

Walter Murdoch commenced lectures in 1913 in tin sheds in the heart of Perth.

Walter Murdoch was known for his help to students and junior colleagues in difficulties.

Walter Murdoch's writing attracted, in his biographer's words, varying types of people "who read him, all with interest, most with pleasure, some with disapproval, over many years".

Indeed, the "Elzevir" articles had begun to reappear in the Argus in 1919, and the essays in varying forms found an all-Australian market when Walter Murdoch's writings were eventually syndicated on the Melbourne Herald network, then chaired by his nephew Keith Walter Murdoch.

Walter Murdoch's essays came to be read by others, then and much later, through collection and book form, from Speaking Personally onward.

On 8 March 1962 at Perth Registry Office, Walter Murdoch married his secretary-companion and nurse, Barbara Marshall Cameron.