Aussie historian, author & entertainer Jim Haynes joins Overnight each week for his unique knowledge of the not-so-famous characters from Australia’s history.  This week Jim shines the spotlight on Dacre Smyth AO – Naval Commodore and Artist.

Commodore Dacre Henry Deudraeth Smyth, AO (5 May 1923 – 3 December 2008) was a senior officer in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), an artist and a poet and the son of the distinguished British general Nevill Maskelyne Smyth.

He joined the RAN in 1940, and participated in the D-Day landings and the Battle of the Coral Sea before retiring as a commodore in 1978.

He served as Deputy Chairman of the Trustees of Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance and was a Life Governor of the Shrine.

He became well known after his retirement for landscape and seascape painting, publishing fourteen books containing his paintings and poems. He married Jennifer Haggard in 1952, and had four daughters and a son.

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