Life Sentences
Life Sentences
What is the secret to writing a really juicy biography? Author Caroline Baum interviewsseasoned players and persistent newcomers who share their experience of navigating sensitive territory in the search for the real story behind a person’s life. Whether they are writing about the famous or the forgotten, whether their version of events is authorised or unauthorised, biography is a high-stakes que…Follow the podcast:
Talking About A Revolution
An elegant Trotskyist, Michael Pablo grew up in Greece to become an urbane revolutionary, who made his presence felt at many of the most significant uprisings of the 20th century in an attempt to build what he called self-managed socialism. Partnered by his dynamic and fearless wife Elli Dyovoum…
54:46
Acing It
She is part Japanese, part Haitian but trained and lives in the US. Nothing about Naomi Osaka is conventional, but she forged her career in the mold of her idol Serena Williams- and then beat her. Along the way, she struggled with mental health and admitted that in public, carried the Japanese fla…
1:01:32
By George
In George Harrison, The Reluctant Beatle, veteran rock journalist and biographer Philip Norman (author of the definitive Beatles book, Shout!) gives us an access all areas portrait of a paradoxical figure who found fame a burden but emerged from the band, to grow into a new creative phase of life t…
58:14Explicit
Healing Hands
Perth based skin and burns surgeon Professor Fiona Wood is one of the most trusted and admired figures in Australian life and yet it took her years to agree to biographer Sue Williams request to let her tell her life story. Time poor and a workaholic, she eventually relented. Williams also talks…
50:57
To Bee or not to Bee
One of the most puzzling and flamboyant women on the streets of Sydney in the twentieth century, Bee Miles became the stuff of legend, a celebrity in her own lifetime, but also a troubled soul who spent time in asylums and in and out of jail. In Bee Miles, Australia’s famous bohemian rebel, Rose E…
1:06:39
Playing By The Rules
Catharine Lumby is the first out of the gate of two biographers to tackle the many-faceted life of author Frank Moorhouse, who was a well known bon vivant, bushwalker and prolific author of fiction and non fiction. He was also an active campaigner on issues including censorship and copyright law. …
51:44Explicit
Love In Code
Every Australian knows My Country, the poem that made Dorothea Mackellar famous at a young age. But very few people know much about her life. In Her Sunburnt Country: The Extraordinary Literary Life of Dorothea Mackellar, biographer Deborah Fitzgerald was approached by her descendants and given …
1:03:17
The Case Of The Incredible Vanishing Woman
Anna Funder has already garnered international praise for her non fiction (Stasiland) and fiction (All That I Am) In Wifedom, she does something new and bold, creating a hybrid of genres that brings together biography, memoir, fiction and feminist critique in what she calls ‘an intervention’ tha…
57:31Explicit
The Petitioner
William Cooper was a remarkable Yorta Yorta man from Victoria, born in the 1860s who sought justice for his people by petitioning the British King for black representation in parliament. He believed that it was necessary to ‘think black’ to understand and implement justice for Aboriginal people. Wh…
44:27
A Fraction Too Much Friction
Often acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest singer songwriters, and compared to Paul McCartney, who is a fan, Neil Finn has had a pretty regular life. He comes from a happy and musical home, which he shared with his older brother Tim. First in Split Enz and then in his own band, Crowded House,…
49:40