Alan Villiers was born in Melbourne, the son of L.J. Villiers , and first went to sea at fifteen. He worked for some time as a proof reader for the Hobart Mercury before joining a five month whaling voyage to Antarctica. On his return Villiers became a reporter for the Hobart Mercury, working there between 1924 and 1929. He then became a full-time adventurer, film maker and author.
In the 1930s Villiers sailed the full-rigged ship Joseph Conrad more than 60,000 miles around the world. After serving in the Royal Navy during World War II, he spent some time sailing with a Portuguese codfishing fleet off Newfoundland and Greenland. Villiers wrote more than thirty books about the sea, including his children's novel, Whalers Under the Midnight Sun, which won the Australian Book Council's Children's Book of the Year in 1950. He settled near Oxford, England, and died there in 1982.
