Michael Rayner Thwaites, AO (30 May 1915 – 1 November 2005) was an Australian academic, poet, and intelligence officer.
[1] He was educated at Geelong Grammar School, entering Trinity College at the University of Melbourne from which he graduated in 1937.
In 1999 he published Atlantic Odyssey, an account of his war service on anti-submarine escort naval trawlers and an armed whaler.
He also maintained that Petrov was a genuinely important source of intelligence in the Cold War context, revealing the names of about 600 Soviet operatives around the world.
Unfinished Journey was republished with some minor changes in a hardback volume titled The Singing Light on the occasion of Michael Thwaites's centenary in 2015.