Category Archives: biographies

Biography review – Hector Harrison: God’s Larrikin by Margaret McLeod

19 Friday Sep 2025

Posted by in biographies, book review, John Curtin

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Hector Harrison (1902-1978) was a prominent Presbyterian minister who led St Andrew’s Church in Canberra from 1940 until his death. He was friendly with Prime Minister John Curtin and Fred Whitlam, father of Gough Whitlam, who was a member of his congregation. There’s a striking scene from Harrison’s oral history at the National Library recounted in Dr Margaret McLeod’s new biography: Harrison is giving Whitlam senior a lift home from the 4th July celebrations at the American Embassy in 1945 and Whitlam reveals that the editor of the Canberra Times had just told him John Curtin wouldn’t last the night. Harrison walked across the paddocks to the Lodge and was, eventually, admitted to see Curtin, hours before his death. At Curtin’s request, Harrison conducted the funeral.

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An Eye for Eternity, chapter 1

20 Sunday Oct 2024

Posted by in biographical method, biographies, biography as a literary form

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Cover of the book

Mark McKenna opens his 2011 biography of the Australian historian Manning Clark (1915-1991) with a beautiful section describing Clark’s voice. ‘His voice sounded the entire person.’ We read accounts of what Clark sounded like from different people who knew him, weaving snippets of quotes, ranging over his whole life. It’s such a wonderful way to introduce Clark, giving a sense of his character and some landmarks of his life. It shifts subtly into a discussion of his appearence and then onto his personality. It’s a brilliant opening chapter.

Another thing I love: the photographs are integrated into the text. They’re right next to the relevant text. I wanted this for my KSP biography but wasn’t allowed it, alas. I think I’ll try again next time!

Two page spread of the book.

How To Do Biography by Nigel Hamilton

15 Thursday Feb 2024

Posted by in biographies, book review

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I’ve started writing a new biography but I still have some doubts, so I’m not ready to announce it yet. But I’ve re-read Nigel Hamilton’s How To Do Biography: A Primer (2008) as part of my process. I first read it just as I began writing the Katharine Prichard biography and it’s been a great refresher a decade later. One of the joys of this book is his dedication to the art of biography and his strong rebuttal of the criticisms which are made of the genre. There’s a sense of having a well-armed ally on my side.

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New publication: Ric Throssell in the Australian Dictionary of Biography

12 Thursday Oct 2023

Posted by in biographies, Katharine Susannah Prichard's associates and connections, news and events

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My Australian Dictionary of Biography entry for Ric Throssell (1922-1999) has been published on the ADB website: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/throssell-ric-prichard-32379. Ric was the only child of Katharine Susannah Prichard and Hugo Throssell and lived with their legacy while leading a life of interest in its own right as a diplomat and author. The entry was really a collaboration with the research editor, Michelle Staff, who had the task of rewriting it to fit the house style and added to my portrait of Ric with some additional research. Thanks to Aiden Coleman who sent this opportunity my way.

Drink Against Drunkenness: the life and times of Sasha Soldatow

07 Wednesday Jun 2023

Posted by in biographies of writers, artists & musicians, book review, political biography

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Drink Against Drunkenness: The Life and Times of Sasha Soldatow Inez Baranay 2022, 508pp, RRP $39.99.

Last year I chanced upon a newspaper clipping from 1990 about the writer and activist Sasha Soldatow (1947-2006) suing the Australia Council over him not being awarded a fellowship despite many applications. It led me to David Marr’s intriguing obituary for the man. ‘To fall in with Sasha at this time was a life-shaking experience. He marched and drank under the banner of Liberty… The deal he offered was this: place yourself in my hands, and I will set you free.’ I commented on Twitter that someone should write Soldatow’s biography. It turns out someone had been! Drink Against Drunkenness: The Life and Times of Sasha Soldatow is a labour of love by his friend, the writer Inez Baranay, author of 14 previous books.

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Kathleen O’Connor of Paris

30 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by in biographies, book review, Western Australia

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Years ago in her story “Paris Bled into the Ocean” Western Australian writer Amanda Curtin fictionalised a legend about the artist Kathleen O’Connor throwing her own paintings into the sea at Fremantle when she couldn’t pay the import duty on them. Fremantle Press suggested she write a book about O’Connor and for it, Curtin has turned from fiction to biography. O’Connor (1876-1968) is a difficult subject. She was a private person, revealing little of her inner or personal life in the papers she left behind. The recollections of those who knew her best suggest she was a mystery to them, too. In these cases, writing a subject’s life as a biographical quest—as Curtin has done—is often the best choice. Curtin walks in O’Connor’s footsteps, from New Zealand where she was born, to Perth where her father, the famous engineer killed himself in 1902, and to Paris, her spiritual and artistic home. ‘I am looking for Kate in this place where she was born. There may be little, or nothing, to find but I have come to believe that people leave traces of themselves in the places they inhabit; that they can carry those places with them forever. It’s a familiar method of research for me—an alchemy of the physical and the instinctual.’ (22) Curtin is unintrusive, alluding to echoes of O’Connor’s life in her own but never taking the focus away from O’Connor and the quest for traces of her. Continue reading →

How to start a biography?

23 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by in biographical method, biographies, My KSP biography, Series: Saturday 10am

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KSP-window-from-100-years-of-Bridges

Katharine Susannah Prichard looking out from her workroom. From This Australia 1985, date of photograph ca. 1930s.

Saturday 10am #4

I’ve decided to write a conventional biography for my first one, ‘cradle to grave’ as it’s called. Because of that, I feel the need to start with an introduction that grips readers and gives them a taste of Katharine’s life, why it matters, and some of what lies ahead in the narrative. Perhaps this is misguided; I just picked up Jill Roe’s Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography off my shelf and she starts in 1879 with Franklin’s birth. Yet as acclaimed as Roe’s biography has been, it didn’t grip me. And Miles Franklin has a name recognition today which Katharine doesn’t have. Continue reading →

Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World by Michelle Scott Tucker

16 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by in biographies, book review

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The twelve-year journey to publication is over for my fellow biographer-blogger Michelle Scott Tucker – her book, Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World, is out. It’s an impressive debut, telling the life of a key Australian colonist as a compulsive story and handling adeptly the gaps in the archive and the jagged edges of an ambitious woman married to a difficult, impulsive man. In 1789, aged in her early twenties, Elizabeth left Britain for the fledgling New South Wales colony with her officer-husband, John, on the Second Fleet. She lived the rest of her long life in New South Wales, conscious of her position as one of the first ‘ladies’ in a convict colony and determinedly steering her family’s wool-growing business to success, despite John’s appalling feuds and vendettas which sabotaged their efforts.

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Biography from a deep well: Martin Edmond’s Battarbee and Namatjira

25 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in biographies, book review

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Edmond-cover-front-for-homepage

One of Australia’s great biographers is a New Zealander. Long a resident of Australia, Martin Edmond’s new book, The Expatriates, is about four New Zealanders who made their mark in Europe. Before that, he tackled the most Australian of subjects in his 2014 dual biography on two great Northern Territory painters, Rex Battarbee and Albert Namatjira. Continue reading →

Biographers’ Forum on Facebook

06 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by in biographies, link, news and events

≈ 3 Comments

Atelier_Seidel_-_Archiv_Glasplatten

Image: Atelier Seidel, Archive of photographic images in the loft of the house.

Biographers are vastly outnumbered by novelists, poets, and probably playwrights. We need to stick together more. I’ve started a new Facebook group called Biographers’ Forum – ‘The art, the joys, and the woes of biography. A place for those writing researched biographies to converse and share resources, tips, reviews, stories, and news.’ It is already trans-Pacific with its first two members, Laura and me. Michelle and Janine and other biographers who read this blog – if you’re on Facebook it would be great to have you there! And for everyone else, if you know any biographers, please do invite them.