PANDEMONIUM By Ross Fitzgerald and Ian McFadyen Hybrid Publishers: Melbourne ISBN - 9781922768131 RRP: $32.99 Reviewed by Ken Spillman The late Barry Humphries knew a thing or two about creating memorable characters. It’s notable, then, that the front cover of Ross Fitzgerald and Ian McFadyen’s latest collaboration, Pandemonium, quotes Humphries’ view that “Grafton Everest [...]
WIFEDOM – MRS ORWELL’S INVISIBLE LIFE By Anna Funder Hamish Hamilton 2023 ISBN: 978 9 14378 711 2 RRP: $36.99 (PB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson From the time some ancient scribbler put the words of the Book of Genesis together, a woman, or the female of the human species, has been known as man’s [...]
SYDNEY – A BIOGRAPHY By Louis Nowra NewSouth 2022 ISBN: 9781742235929 RRP: $39.99 (PB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson The biography of a major global city such as Sydney is a monumental task. How to make it manageable, readable and accessible is the question. Louis Nowra, acclaimed playwright and author, gets it right before [...]
THE FLAME OF RESISTANCE. AMERICAN BEAUTY. FRENCH HERO. BRITISH SPY – THE UNTOLD STORY OF JOSEPHINE BAKER’S SECRET WAR By Damien Lewis Quercus 2022 ISBN: 978 9 152941 675 6 RRP: $32.99 (PB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson The tragic events from mid-1940, with the fall of France to Nazi Germany, and the conflict that [...]
RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER By Kate Grenville Text Publishing 2023 ISBN: 9781922790330 RRP: $45 (HB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson Dolly Maunder’s mistake, according to her grand daughter and literary creator Kate Grenville, was to be born in 1880 and as a woman who was clever and a bit ambitious. As such, she would face [...]
FIVE LOVE AFFAIRS AND A FRIENDSHIP – THE PARIS LIFE OF NANCY CUNARD, ICON OF THE JAZZ AGE By Anne De Courcy Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2022 ISBN: 978 1 4746 0742 0 RRP: $32.99 (PB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson It would be hard to number the lovers of shipping heiress Nancy Cunard whose fame [...]
POLITICAL LIVES – AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR BIOGRAPHERS By Chris Wallace UNSW Press 2023 ISBN: 9781742237497 RRP: $39.99 (PB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson What better topic for a book by a contemporary biographer than one about contemporary biographies of Australian prime ministers and the journalists, largely, who wrote them. In this, Chris Wallace, [...]
ANNABELLE RANKIN – AUSTRALIAN BIOGRAPHICAL MONOGRAPHS 18 By Peter Sekuless Connor Court Publishing 2023 ISBN: 9781922815385 RRP: $19.95 (PB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson For a woman of so many firsts, Senator Dame Annabelle Rankin has, as writer Peter Sukeless puts it, “been overlooked for too long”. Now, Connor Court’s Australian Biographical Monograph Series has [...]
THE RED HOTEL – THE UNTOLD STORY OF STALIN’S DISINFORMATION WAR By Alan Philps Headline Publishing Group 2023 ISBN: 978 1 0354 0131 4 RRP: $34.99 (PB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson It is hard to imagine any untold stories left from the days of Stalinist Russia. But Alan Phips has found a new way [...]
EDDA MUSSOLINI – THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN IN EUROPE By Caroline Moorhead Chatto & Windus London 2022 ISBN: 9781784743239 (HB) 9781784743246 (TPB) RRP: $35 (PB) Reviewed by Anne Henderson She was cold hearted, wild in temperament, her father’s daughter and a committed fascist. But as to the label given to her by the Egyptian [...]
