Life Sentences Podcast

Errol Flynn is still the most famous Australian actor ever to make it big in Hollywood. Best known for athletic and romantic leads in films like Robin Hood, he had lived the life of an entitled boss on plantations in New Guinea as a fortune hunter before being discovered on the beach at Bondi.   His rapid rise to stardom in Hollywood was enabled by the powerful studio system operating at full tilt and by media complicity that burnished his image and relished the scandals of his many marriages. When he was put on trial for statutory rape in 1942, it only served to increase his popularity and fan base. A new biography by colonial historian Patricia O’Brien provides a fascinating and often shocking insight into Flynn’s behaviour and his values, as well as shedding light on his family’s shady background, his many under-age lovers, and his tendency to exaggerate wildly about his exploits.

Peter Matthiessen was a giant of American twentieth century letters, and the only writer ever to win the National Book Award in both the fiction and non-fiction categories. He was a complicated man who went to great lengths to escape the privilege he was born into. A comprehensive new biography The Lives of Peter Matthiessen by Australian biographer Lance Richardson sheds fresh light on the many aspects of his complex personality as an eloquent advocate for the environment, through his enduring classic The Snow Leopard and other books about journeys to remote and fragile eco systems; and as social justice crusader and advocacy journalist for native American Indians. Using previously unpublished letters from his widow Maria, together with other personal sources from previous wives and lovers, Richardson is also able to write about Matthiessen’s three marriages and often messy family life, his powerful ego and his lifelong sense of longing and quest for transcendence.

Before Ash Barty, there was Evonne Goolagong, the first First Nations champion at Wimbledon. She was a player endowed with natural ability but also handicapped by plenty of disadvantages. To develop her talent at tennis she has to leave home at a very young age and move in with her coach and his family, a story she told in a memoir she wrote many years later with her friend Phil Jarratt.   Now a TV adaptation, directed by acclaimed First Nations director Wayne Blair, and written by Steven McGregor and Megan Simpson Huberman, tells the Goolagong story on screen in a dramatization based on her memoir. But a biopic is constrained by budget and other issues such as casting that mean the story has to be told differently. So what gets left out?

After the success of her debut novel My Brilliant Career, Australian writer Miles Franklin faced a familiar problem: how to write her next book and what should it be about? Her UK publisher was not keen on her ideas and so she turned to journalism and went undercover to write an exposé of the life of a domestic servant. It was a revelation to her and to her readers: the behaviour of her employers, the exhaustion, the injuries in the course of a working day, the lack of time off, all of this written about by a spy in various well-heeled homes.   Then Miles‘ radical spirit went further and she took off for America, where she joined a network of feminist reformers. In Miles Franklin Undercover, scholar and journalist Kerrie Davies draws on a wealth of primary sources to get inside the mind of one of the most significant and unconventional writers in Australian literary history.

Between 1974 and 1991 Frank Arkell was the flamboyant mayor of Wollongong. But his name is forever associated with the infamy of being accused of being part of a paedophile ring. In a sensational twist, he was murdered in his home.   As the mayor of a major industrial hub, Arkell had ambitious visions of how the city could transform itself into a tourism destination with a more refined profile, and applied himself to promoting his plans with relentless conviction. But his darker side became increasingly public knowledge.   Historian Erik Eklund, who grew up in Wollongong, has written a biography of Arkell that explains his background, his impact and his legacy.

Authorised biographies, especially of those in high office, tend to suffer from being overly respectful if not downright deferential. But in the case of Juliet Rieden’s authorised biography of Quentin Bryce, the first female Governor General of Australia, authorisation means co-operation without editorial control.   In this episode, Rieden explains her close relationship with her subject and how she used the trust she had developed with Bryce to get beyond the immaculate façade she presented in public life. The result is a portrait that is revealing of a woman of grit and determination whose country roots  gave her the ability to connect with everyone she met.

In this very revealing memoir/biography hybrid, bestselling author Bryce Courtenay’s son Adam explores the motives and personality traits that shaped his father as a public figure and parent.   As a pathological fantasist, Bryce could not resist making up stories about his ancestry and life experience growing up in South Africa. Later, he was able to harness his success in advertising to making the leap into writing fiction. But he seemed unable to distinguish between the stories he invented on the page and the stories he told about himself, causing hurt and confusion at home.   Based on his own memories and conversations with many of Bryce’s friends and associates, Adam paints a complex portrait of a generous man who did everything - from running to drinking to writing at full tilt. His books The Power of One and April Fool’s Day earned him the adoration of millions, but he could never earn the respect of the literati. In Adam Courtenay’s account, his father was better at life in public than in private, finding fame easier than family.

Elizabeth Harrower is not a household name in Australian writing, so how has she ended up with not one but two biographies, both published within a month of each other? By sheer coincidence, journalist Helen Trinca and literary editor Susan Wyndham both found themselves on the Harrower trail, working through the same archives, talking to the same sources, each well aware of the other. This double shot of attention is ironic, given that Harrower was best known in the fifties for her novels The Long Prospect and The Watchtower, but withdrew a subsequent novel from publication and vanished from the literary landscape until she was rediscovered in 2012 by a publisher keen to revive her work for a new audience. Both Trinca and Wyndham met Harrower on several occasions. What conclusions did they come to and where do they differ in how they see Harrower’s life and work? How do they interpret her decision to sabotage her career? In their first joint conversation, Trinca and Wyndham compare notes.

Australian poet Dorothy Porter blazed across the literary scene like a meteor. She was even more seductive in real life than on the page and broke many women’s hearts in her short but busy amorous life. Now her adoring younger sister, Josie McSkimming has written Gutsy Girls, a revealing memoir biography of her sister and their family, exposing some of the darker aspects of life with their QC father Chester Porter. A restless traveler, a passionate lesbian who fell in love as easily as breathing, Dorothy Porter consumed life at a heightened intensity and velocity. Her best known works made poetry part of the mainstream, including the crime verse novel The Monkey’s Mask. She beat cancer, but died in 2008 at the age of just 54, of pneumonia.

Although there are several biographies of big game fishing bestselling American author Zane Grey, none of them focus on his two visits to Australia.   Author Vicki Hastrich is also a fishing enthusiast, so when she came across Zane Grey by accident, her interest was piqued. How had this handsome athletic man become the world’s first millionaire author? And why did he leave the US to set up camp on the south coast of NSW with a large entourage, generating massive public and media interest?   The Last Days of Zane Grey documents a man with a complex temperament driven by a larger than life appetite for the chase - of big game fish at sea, and of women on land. With a flair for hyperbole and self-promotion that was ahead of his time, Grey is part Hollywood, part Hemingway.   Hastrich’s lively and entertaining biography sparkles with prose that brings the ocean to shimmering life on the page while also capturing almost farcical moments of mishap involving a fake shark.

Fearless Beatrice Faust is an overdue biography of a significant reformist force in the women’s liberation movement of the 60s and 70s in Australia.   Written by political scholar Dr Judith Brett, this lively biography returns Bea to the prominence she once enjoyed as a controversial media figure and activist, primarily championing abortion rights. But it also explores the shadows in her life; including her struggles with her mental and physical health, and her lifelong fascination with all aspects of human sexuality, including her own, which she regarded as androgynous. When it came to Bea Faust, nothing was taboo; her contemporary Helen Garner declared she was not afraid of anything, and this book certainly confirms that fearlessness and curiosity were key aspects of her intellect.

American film critic Carrie Rickey has written the first biography of celebrated French cinema pioneer, Agnes Varda.   Varda was born in Belgium but found her creative community in the southern French port town of Sete, which cemented her love for the beach and for many other things that would reappear in her films, especially the ordinary lives of working people. She once said that if you opened her up, you would find beaches inside her.   After studying art she became a photographer, tutored by Georges Brassaï. When she turned her attention to film, she became the only female member of the so called Nouvelle Vague or New Wave in French cinema, alongside Francois Truffaut, Jean Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Eric Rohmer.   Defying categorisation she made both feature films and documentaries, zig zagging between the two, following her curiosity wherever it led for more than sixty years. Her marriage to fellow film-maker Jacques Demy was unconventional in that both were bi-sexual, but their love was enduring.   Varda received an honorary Oscar and an honorary Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. She died in 2019 at the age of 90, of cancer. She remains a revered figure in world cinema, admired by directors and audiences alike, more popular than in her lifetime.   Biographer Carrie Rickey is an American film critic met Varda on several occasions informally at film festivals but never discussed the possibility of writing her biography. Her book A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnes Varda was written without the co-operation of Varda’s family but with the help of many of her collaborators and friends.

The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli is a fascinating biographical investigation into the life of Harry Freame - a half Australian, half Japanese military Scout who defied the odds at the front in some of the most vicious fighting of World War One. Some believe he deserved the VC for his bravery but was denied because of being partly Asian.   After the war Harry faces a new challenge: becoming a soldier settler and orchardist. This proves to be harder than war, while his family life is messy and puzzling. Much later, at an age when many would be contemplating retirement, he is recruited into Australian intelligence, but totally unprepared for the role. His cause of death is disputed and he is denied a military headstone.   When he discovers this final injustice, author Ryan Butta becomes indignant and goes beyond the role of biographer to intervene on behalf of Harry and those like him who never got the acknowledgement they deserved.

To mark the sesquicentenary of Jane Austen’s birth, this episode is an edited version of an event for Sydney Writers Festival.   Speakers are scholar of English literature Professor William Christie, bestselling author Jane Caro and First Nations author Larissa Behrendt.   Each of them celebrates different facets of their admiration for Jane Austen in terms of her characters, and her social commentary on class, entitlement, her love of nature, and the dynamics of family.   To learn more about Jane Austen I recommend Paula Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen - a life in small things

In 2024 a story appeared in the Toronto Star by Deborah Dundas that set the world of biography on fire. At the centre of it was Alice Munro’s biographer Robert Thacker, who has devoted thirty years of his life as an academic to a close archival study of Alice Munro’s work.   It was revealed that Thacker had known for two decades that Alice’s daughter Andrea had been sexually molested by her stepfather Gerald Fremlin. When Andrea approached Thacker to ask him to make revisions to the manuscript of his book, in the light of this information, it was just at the point when the manuscript was complete and about to be printed, and he declined. He declined again when a revised edition of the book appeared several years later. He has always maintained that as an archival scholar, he had no interest in personal family dynamics and in the psychological aspects of Alice’s oeuvre.   Gerald Fremlin pled guilt to a charge of indecent assault and served a suspended sentence with two years probation. Alice Munro chose to remain with Fremlin rather than support her daughter.   In this episode Caroline Baum talks to Robert Thacker and explores the uncomfortable moral terrain of a biographer when presented with explosive material that they feel is beyond the scope of their particular focus and asks where does the biographer’s responsibility lies.   To read an in-depth account of Andrea Skinner’s experience and its repercussions for her, for Alice Munro and for Munro’s reading public, go to the excellent piece by New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/30/alice-munros-passive-voice   There is also an essay by Anne Enright in her latest anthology Attention, on the Munro affair.

Dominic Amerena is a rising young Australian writer who has chosen a biographer as the central figure in his novel I Want Everything. His ambitious, unnamed narrator recognises an older woman at the city baths one day as Brenda Shales, a writer who was famous for two incendiary novels before disappearing from public view. Recognising an opportunity, he works his way into her confidence and she agrees to tell him her story. He sees fame and fortune in his future. His girlfriend Ruth, also a writer, but who is already enjoying success, is not so sure. Dominic Amerena discusses the influences and ideas underpinning his mischievous plot.

In a first for Life Sentences, host Caroline Baum welcomes a panel of four Australian biographers to discuss the biographies they have read and enjoyed recently. -Ryan Butta chooses Anthony Sharwood’s hybrid travelogue biography of Polish freedom fighter Tadeusz Kosciusko and also mentions Didion and Babitz, by Lili Anolik, which compares the lives of two gifted writers on the LA scene of the Sixties. -Susan Wyndham chooses Vicki Hastrich’s The Last Days of Zane Grey about the flamboyantly successful American big game fishing legend who was also a bestselling author with a complicated love life. -Bernadette Brennan chooses Drusilla Modjeska’s important new group biography of European and American modernist female artists who have been largely overlooked or eclipsed by male partners. -Anthony Sharwood chooses Ryan Butta’s The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli, about the mysterious Harry Freame, an Australian war hero who was half Japanese and raised in the code of the samurai. Caroline makes reference to the new biography of former Governor General Quentin Bryce, and to reading the doorstop epic new biography of Mark Twain by Ron Chernow. 

Past biographies have always dismissed Pamela Harriman as a socialite who slept her way to the top, in a series of affairs and marriages that boosted her thirst for power.   But Sonia Purnell argues persuasively that Harriman was in fact one of the most significant diplomats of the 20th century and that her motives were always those of ensuring peace and the best possible outcomes for the UK, the US and the world. She deployed her charms and incredible power of seduction on everyone from Randolph Churchill to Gianni Agnelli, the Aga Khan, Ed Murrow, Bill Paley and Averell Harriman, moving from politics to the world of Broadway by marrying producer Leland Heyward and hosting a salon in Washington that became the epicentre of the world of intelligence and refinement. Even the Russians were not immune to her charms.   How did a minor British aristo with no formal education come to be so influential? Purnell’s juicy biography, Kingmaker, is a fascinating and deliciously gossipy but serious portrait of a bygone world of glamour and intrigue, high stakes secrets, scandalous love affairs and strategic partnerships in and out of the bedroom of one of the world’s most intriguing women.

Past biographies have always dismissed Pamela Harriman as a socialite who slept her way to the top, in a series of affairs and marriages that boosted her thirst for power.   But Sonia Purnell argues persuasively that Harriman was in fact one of the most significant diplomats of the 20th century and that her motives were always those of ensuring peace and the best possible outcomes for the UK, the US and the world. She deployed her charms and incredible power of seduction on everyone from Randolph Churchill to Gianni Agnelli, the Aga Khan, Ed Murrow, Bill Paley and Averell Harriman, moving from politics to the world of Broadway by marrying producer Leland Heyward and hosting a salon in Washington that became the epicentre of the world of intelligence and refinement. Even the Russians were not immune to her charms.   How did a minor British aristo with no formal education come to be so influential? Purnell’s juicy biography, Kingmaker, is a fascinating and deliciously gossipy but serious portrait of a bygone world of glamour and intrigue, high stakes secrets, scandalous love affairs and strategic partnerships in and out of the bedroom of one of the world’s most intriguing women.

Race Matthews had a distinguished career as a federal politician and Victorian state Minister, but the highlight of his career was his time as Gough Whitlam’s Principal Private Secretary.    A joiner from a very early age, he understood the power of working within an organisation to bring about change but his ambitions for reform and social justice were often thwarted years ago factional in-fighting. He remained a passionate advocate for Fabian values and collectivism.   His second wife, Iola, a journalist with several books to her name, decided to complete her husband’s memoir as a biography when ill health made the task impossible for him. The result is a loving, considered account of Race’s career and her experience of being a political wife.

Painter Charles Blackman described himself as a guttersnipe when he met and fell in love with partially sighted poet Barbara Patterson.   Together, the couple became part of a bohemian crowd of artists who moved between Sydney and Melbourne, and helped shape Australian art for decades.   Now their daughter Christabel has documented a significant, passionate and fruitful decade of their early years and marriage, thanks to her parents love letters and her mother’s diaries.   The result is a uniquely personal and intimate perspective on a creative partnership.   To see images from Charles and Barbara Blackman a decade of love and art, go to: @carobaumlifesentences on Instagram

Recorded live as part of Sydney Writers Festival 2024, this is a three way conversation between three biographers - Nadia Wheatley, Brigitta Olubas and Susan Wyndham - about three literary legends: Charmian Clift, Shirley Hazzard, Elizabeth Harrower - three writers who experienced the twentieth century very differently but who overlapped in shared perspectives on their home country, Australia, and its ability to fulfil its potential. While both Hazzard and Clift spent large parts of their lives overseas, Harrower mostly stayed home, sharing an extensive correspondence with Hazzard. Clift, meanwhile, shared her thoughts on issues both frivolous and serious with her devoted readers in a regular weekly newspaper column, as well as in her books. While Hazzard achieved literary glory internationally, Clift and Harrower found success, to varying degrees, at home. All three are in print today.

Anthony Sharwood set out to investigate how Australia’s highest peak comes to be named after an eighteenth century freedom fighter and military engineer, Taddeusz Koszciuscko. The result is an unorthodox hybrid he describes as a travelography. The result is much more than a portrait of a remarkable figure of enlightenment and progressive ideals, whose influence was felt from his native Poland to America, where his will was a vexed issue for his friend Thomas Jefferson.

The official history of Australia may have forgotten colourful rogues like Tom Ley, but Mudgee painter Michael Bourke has painted a biographical suite of scenes that tell his life story in almost cartoonish images. He talks to Caroline Baum about how Tom Ley became known as Lemonade Ley and how he rose from abject poverty to become a Minister in the NSW government, before travelling to London and being accused of murder. It sounds like fiction, but it’s all true.

Caroline Hodgson took the name Madame Brussels to become the ‘flash madam’ of Melbourne in the post Gold Rush era. Her business sense for buying real estate and flair for style and comfort attracted the big end of town, as well as the attention of the press. As well as running a brothel, she was a wife and a mother, a fascinating character who showed care and consideration for her employees. Her biographer Barbara Minchinton uncovers her story through a mix of archaeology, a photo album and the sleuthing skills of a feminist historian.

When Caroline Baum interviewed Fleet Street veteran royal correspondent Robert Jobson about his new, very favourable biography of Katherine, Princess of Wales, the conversation did not go as planned.

For decades, Kitty Kelley has held the reputation as the queen of celebrity biography in the US, writing juicy and revealing accounts of the lives of Jackie Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, The Bush family, Nancy Reagan etc.   Now in her eighties, she reflects on how she got started as a journalist in Washington DC, and reveals some of the tricks and techniques that she used to get reliable sources to talk to her while avoiding prosecution from her powerful subjects. In this candid and revealing conversation she talks about the rewards and downsides of a unique career as the world’s bestselling biographer.

Donald Horne was Australia’s leading public intellectual in the sixties and seventies and coined the phrase The Lucky Country in his bestselling book of the same title. The phrase has entered the Australian vernacular, and is often misused and interpreted as a sign of national complacency. Before he became an author, Horne had tried on many hats: as a journalist, ad man, and editor; later he became an academic and a bureaucrat. The big story in his life was his political shift from the conservative right to the progressive left, thanks to his enthusiasm for Gough Whitlam’s vision of Australia’s potential. Famous for his love of a long lunch (especially when he was the editor of the Bulletin), he was indeed lucky to find in his second wife Myfanwy a partner who was a true collaborator in all his ideas. Ryan Cropp’s energetic debut biography captures the paradoxes and many-faceted ambitions of the man and his times.

There has never been anyone like Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev. The Russian impresario shook up the dusty world of ballet, making it the centre of the avant garde in the early part of the twentieth century, especially in Paris where the premieres of L’Apres Midi ‘D’un Faune and the Rite of Spring caused shock and scandal. Born in a provincial backwater, Diaghilev made his way to St Petersburg with ambitions as a painter and composer, but failed at both. Eventually he discovered that his talents were more curatorial and, after bringing Russian art to Paris, he returned with The Ballets Russes, a troupe of brilliant dancers, including Nijinski, and gorgeous sets and costumes, taking the city by storm. Collaborating with artists like Picasso and Stravinsky, Diaghilev changed the face of dance forever. He defined the word impresario in a unique way, discovering talent, finding the money to stage lavish productions and generating huge audience excitement, in a dizzying feat of risk-taking and flair. In this episode, British cultural critic Rupert Christensen discusses his book Diaghilev’s Empire, about the impact, influence and legacy of a larger than life individual who loved Russia but was condemned by history to a life in exile.

Recorded in the lead up the UK election of 2024, this is a conversation with Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer’s biographer, journalist and former Labour insider Tom Baldwin. He explains how the biography was written with Starmer’s co-operation but was not authorised by him and how Starmer learns things from the book that he did not expect, but feels uncomfortable with some of the details about his complex family relationships. What emerges is a portrait of a relentless, hardworking details man, who consults, listens and is outcome focussed. A man who is not political in the traditional sense, but who has leadership skills and who values of integrity and decency but is not always good at playing the media game. He’d much rather play football with his old mates.

Most people are unaware of the existence of the Australian Dictionary of National Biography, a remarkable effort of scholarship by an army of volunteer historians and specialist contributors committed to documenting significant and representative Australians. It’s a challenging task in terms not only of scale but because previous entries need to be revised in the light of fresh historical evidence and interpretation. Women and First Nations figures were overlooked when the project began, but that is now being addressed. The Director of the National Dictionary of Biography is historian Dr Melanie Nolan. She tells Life Sentences how the Dictionary differs from its British counterpart, how entries are selected and how the Dictionary is trying to move with the times.

To fully enjoy this episode, it is recommended that you watch the documentary Turn Every Page about the unique working relationship between biography giant Robert Caro and his editor of fifty years, Robert Gottlieb. Robert Caro is regarded by many as the greatest biographer of his generation, thanks to the ambition, scope and meticulous detail of his 1974 best selling biography The Power Broker, about Robert Moses, the unscrupulous developer who built the New York we know today. Now 88, he is currently at work on the eagerly awaited fifth volume of his biography of President Lyndon Johnson. Robert Gottlieb is a former editor of the New Yorker and has edited many of the greats of twentieth century American literature from Joseph Heller to Toni Morrison. His partnership with Robert Caro was a unique relationship between author and editor that never translated into a personal friendship outside of work. Lizzie Gottlieb, Robert Gottlieb’s daughter, was given unprecedented access to the very shy, modest and private Robert Caro. Her observational documentary tells the story of his research methods, of how he uncovered the racism inherent in Robert Moses’ approach to urban development and of the secrets and lies buried within the Johnson family that Caro’s unflagging patience and active listening uncovered in Texas.

This content is from BIO, The US based Biographers International Organisation, which promotes and champions the practice of biography to writers and readers. You can read more about BIO here: https://biographersinternational.org/ In this episode award-winning biographer Jonathan Eig talks about why it was time, after more than three decades, for a new biography of Martin Luther King that explored his flawed humanity.  Benefitting from the release of previously unavailable documents from the White House and the FBI, this is a biography of King written for the generation that came of age with Black Lives Matter, that may know little of King and his dream.

Historian Kate Fullagar tells the story of the intertwined destinies of Governor Phillip and First Nations leader Bennelong, beginning with their deaths and spooling gradually back to their first encounter. This bold, unconventional approach allows for a wider lens and different perspective on their respective personalities and achievements, and on the events which brought them together at a time when Britain’s colonial ambitions were to shape Australia for the next century. Understanding, misunderstanding, conflict and a remarkable journey together to Britain give this double-headed biography a compelling and sometimes poignant narrative. Life Sentences is produced by David Roach for Two Heads Media and edited by Kirra Jordan for PipeWolf Media. We live and work on Dharawal country and pay our respects to elders past and present. Music is composed and performed by Amanda Brown.

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 Dyovoumoti, Pablo was often in great danger, spent time in prison, and made enemies among fellow socialists. But when it came to the Algerian uprising of 1962 against the French, he rolled up his intellectual sleeves and got his hands dirty, helping the Algerians to arm themselves by setting up a gun factory. The story of this venture is worth a movie in its own right. Clashing with Castro, supporting Solidarity in Poland, Pablo was an influential force without ever becoming a leader. He was ahead of his time in his support for fully-fledged feminism and maintained a strong circle of friends throughout his life. Hall Greenland’s biography, The Well-Dressed Revolutionary, is an admiring portrait of a man and a time when socially progressive ideas had real momentum and it felt as if the world were tilting towards a raised consciousness on equality and human rights.

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 flag into an empty stadium at the Tokyo Olympics during Covid, and attracted Asian sponsors desperate for a role model their customers could relate to. Oh and she also became a mother. Ben Rothenberg’s sympathetic biography takes the reader off the court into the inner circle of coaches, managers, family and fans to paint a portrait of a complex, elusive young woman who is one of the most intriguing champions on the circuit today.

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 that was rewarding and productive in unexpected ways. Based on extensive interviews with those who knew Harrison intimately,  this is a biography that is not always flattering to its subject. Harrison presents as a series of contradictions, but there is no doubt that he was eclipsed and under-estimated by Lennon and McCartney in the Beatles. He is, however, credited with writing one of its greatest hits and introducing the band to Eastern music, through his interest in learning to play the sitar, thanks to his deep friendship with Ravi Shankar. Later he enjoyed global success in his own right, as well as becoming a pioneer of pop philanthropy, producing the landmark concert for Bangladesh and had a second career as a successful independent film producer, financing his friends The Pythons Life of Brian.

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 to her colleagues and patients and recreates the scenes on the ground following the Bali bombing to paint a rounded but nonetheless admiring picture of a very determined medical pioneer who combines exceptional surgical skills with an excellent bedside manner and a holistic vision of how the body heals.

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 Ellis uncovers a medical diagnosis that sheds new light on what caused Bee’s notorious episodes of misbehaviour in public places. She also examines the intense and fraught dynamic between Bee and her powerful father, and paints the scene when Sydney was bubbling with new ideas from a heady collision of the rationalist society, rising nationalism and a flourishing underground bohemian scene. Bee was at the centre of everything, but also had nowhere to live.  Just how did this intelligent, infuriating, unpredictable, outspoken woman become famous for being homeless?

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. Lumby’s biography, Frank Moorhouse: A Life, is organised thematically and relies on her longstanding friendship with Moorhouse for its very personal approach as she navigates his archive selectively. In doing so she reflects on the moral dilemmas that face a biographer who is close not only to their subject but respectful of the people in his orbit who may wish to remain anonymous. The result is an intimate introduction to an intriguing figure in Australian culture, who knew how to make a mean martini.

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 unprecedented access to her papers, including a diary she wrote in code. What secret loves was she hiding and protecting? And why did this privileged, beautiful, intelligent and eligible young woman never marry? This is the remarkable and until now untold story of an independent free-spirited woman who lived on her own terms, with her closest companion and creative soul mate.

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’ that examines how George Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy came to be erased from the many biographies of her husband. Though very much a crucial partner and collaborator in his political activism against the fascists in Spain as well as in his writing, few traces of Eileen are to be found. Funder, an avowed Orwell admirer, brings O’Shaughnessy out from the shadows and portrays her as a sharp, resourceful and calm partner under pressure, who is also an intellectual match for her husband. Funder questions the silence that has enveloped O’Shaughnessy for too long: is it deliberate, or simply the symptom of general oversight explained by the sexism of the times? At times furious and at times funny, this is biography at its most creative and thought-provoking, forcing the reader to re-assess the reputation of one of the most admired writers of his time. Wifedom is a game changer.

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. When he heard about the persecution of the Jews following Kristallnacht, he took a petition to the German consulate in protest. An eloquent and distinguished activist, he is the subject of a scholarly biography by historian Bain Atwood, who examines Cooper’s life and influence in the context of colonialism and the Aboriginal experience of dispossession and the impact of a Christian mission education.

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, the brothers demonstrated a capacity to make joyful hooky music that became worldwide hits. But there were tensions with Tim and the death of band member Paul Hester’s cast a long shadow. Rock journalist Jeff Apter has written biographies of Keith Urban, Gwen Stefani, The Bee Gees and Jeff Buckley. He talks about the genre of rock/pop biography, and explains how lyrics can reveal more than any interview.

She was one of the finest poets Australia has ever produced but Gwen Harwood was also a very mischievous woman, who played literary pranks on editors who failed to publish her work. When marriage takes her to Tasmania, she hates the place. Her husband is an intensely jealous man who is totally uninterested in her work. She embarks on intense friendships with both men and women and passionate love affairs, writes hundreds of letters and poems and eventually finds acclaim and recognition. After two previous attempts by other writers fail, Ann-Marie Priest rises to the challenge of the first biography of a major literary figure who lived off the radar. Ann-Marie Priest navigates all the twists and turns of Harwood’s life of ducking and weaving and hiding behind false identities to unmask a true original and reveal an unknown love story.

Nora Ephron had it all: success, love, friendship, a brilliantly original voice, personal style. As the writer of Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail, she demonstrated an acute ability to write about relationships between men and women that was bestselling and box office gold. Her essay collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck, showcased her talent for being simultaneously frivolous and profound. First time biographer Kirstin Marguerite Doidge is an Ephron fan who has spoken to many of Nora’s friends, colleagues, and contemporaries to get beneath the groomed surface of her subject.

Award-winning investigative journalist and political biographer Margaret Simons was hesitant about undertaking a biography of Tanya Plibersek until she made a surprising discovery of their shared enthusiasm for Jane Austen. Here, Simons discusses the differences between authorised and unauthorised biography and which Austen character Plibersek most resembles. She also talks about the impact of Plibersek’s background as the daughter of migrants, her strengths and weaknesses, the character of her ambition, her victories and setbacks, and the one interview she failed to secure.

In the second part of this conversation John Lahr talks about Arthur Miller’s disastrous marriage to Marilyn Monroe how it came about and discusses the impact of success and celebrity on Miller,  as well as one of his greatest and most relevant plays,  The Crucible and The Misfits, the film script he wrote for Monroe, as well as his play about her, After the Fall.

Theatre’s most respected critic, New Yorker critic and biographer John Lahr has compressed his deep understanding of Arthur Miller’s life and creative process into a fascinating biography Arthur Miller: American Witness. In this revealing portrait, full of personal anecdotes from family and friends, and drawing on an unpublished memoir by a nephew, Lahr explores the connections between Miller’s complex family dynamics, particularly with his father and his brother, to illustrate how personal tensions and themes of betrayal feed into plays like Death of Salesman and All My Sons. He also talks about Miller’s collaboration and friendship with Elia Kazan and the rift between them following their testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee in the era of McCarthyism.

While Shirley Hazzard has many devoted admirers and readers, particularly for her best known novel The Transit of Venus, many would be unaware of her life story. She was a private woman, and because she lived in Europe and America,  Australia had mixed feelings about her - and those mixed feelings were reciprocated. Now, in a superb new biography, literary scholar Brigitta Olubas provides a comprehensive, insightful portrait of a complex woman who was ashamed of her  genteel Sydney origins and her difficult mother, had a lacklustre career at the United Nations but  was reborn when she reached Italy. After several unhappy love affairs she found true harmony with the distinguished biographer Francis Steegmuller; Together they moved in intellectual circles and lived a privileged, cultured life  in New York, Naples and on Capri. Olubas has spent forty years studying Hazzard; the result is arguably the finest Australian biography of the year.