turbulence of the Suez Crisis in 1957. The novel, one of Aldridge's most lengthy and most ambitious, drew a less favourable response than previous works. Hal Lehrman, writing in the Saturday Review, labelled it "a swollen bore". Aldridge continued to draw inspiration from topical events and the Cold War tensions between the East and West gave him the subject for his next novel A Captive in the Land (1962), set in the frozen wastes of the Arctic where an English scientist rescues the sole survivor of a crashed Russian aircraft. Like all of his politically themed works, Aldridge attempted to explore all viewpoints and portray the "grey" area in-between opposing forces and beliefs. In this case, the Englishman is initially viewed by his fellow Westerners as a hero but later he is treated with increasing suspicision due to his efforts to allow the Russian to be freed. W. G. Rogers, writing in the Saturday Review, praised the novel thus: "...the moral adventure here is more challenging and better and faster reading than the physical. But all the way its a gripping story that gets under your skin and stays there." The novel was made into a film of the same name in 1993. From the mid-1960s, many of Aldridge's works were written for children and young adults and a number of his later works were set in his homeland of Australia. His 1966 novel My Brother Tom was set in the fictional Australian town of St Helen, closely based on the town of Swan Hill by the Murray River where he spent much of his childhood. This novel, the first in a series of six set in St Helen, while a novel that portrayed a love story between two young people, explored moral and political dilemmas and ideas, in this case the severe tensions between the town's Catholic and Protestant citizenry. The novel became a TV mini-series in 1986, starring Gordon Jackson and Keith Michell. Another of the St Helen series, The True Story of Lilli Stubeck, was the 1995 Children's Book Council of Australia book of the year. His 1973 children's novel A Sporting Proposition was adapted as the 1975 Disney film Ride a Wild Pony. In 1971 he was a member of the jury at the 7th Moscow International Film Festival. Aldridge won a Lenin Peace Prize in 1972 for "his outstanding struggle for the preservation of peace".