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.

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.
&nbsp;
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&rsquo;Brien provides a fascinating and often shocking insight into Flynn&rsquo;s behaviour and his values, as well as shedding light on his family&rsquo;s shady background, his many under-age lovers, and his tendency to exaggerate wildly about his exploits.

What is the secret to writing a really juicy biography? Author Caroline Baum interviews seasoned 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 quest full of twists and turns.

What is the secret to writing a really juicy biography? Author Caroline Baum interviews seasoned players and persistent newcomers who share their experience of navigating sensitive territory in the search for the real story behind a person&rsquo;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 quest full of twists and turns.

Life Sentences Podcast

What is the secret to writing a really juicy biography? Author Caroline Baum interviews seasoned 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 quest full of twists and turns.

What is the secret to writing a really juicy biography? Author Caroline Baum interviews seasoned players and persistent newcomers who share their experience of navigating sensitive territory in the search for the real story behind a person&rsquo;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 quest full of twists and turns.

Life Sentences

The Swashbuckler

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.

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&rsquo;s three marriages and often messy family life, his powerful ego and his lifelong sense of longing and quest for transcendence.

Walks on the Wild Side

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?

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.
&nbsp;
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?

Shooting the Shots

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.

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 expos&eacute; 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.
&nbsp;
Then Miles&lsquo; 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.

The Swashbuckler

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