Richard Hughes

Richard Joseph Hughes CBE (5 March 19064 January 1984) was an Australian journalist who spent much of his life in the Far East as correspondent for The Times, The Economist and the Far Eastern Economic Review. He was the inspiration for the fictional character Dikko Henderson in Ian Fleming's James Bond novel You Only Live Twice, and for "Old Craw" in John le Carré's The Honourable Schoolboy. Early life Hughes was born on 5 March 1906 at Prahran, Melbourne, Australia. He was the eldest child of Richard Hughes, a salesman, and his wife Katie, née McGlade. Career His working life began at the Victorian Railways and he acquired his first journalistic experiences as a writer for the house magazine The Victorian Railways Magazine which is where he acquired the poetic style of writing for which he later became famous. He later worked within the Frank Packer organisation. Hughes was a war correspondent in the North African campaign of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. In 1940 he was based in Tokyo and warned that Japan was likely to enter the war against the Allies.