Let me take you back four and a half decades, and tell you about one of the most popular books of the late 1970s, a family saga said in Australia, called The Thorn Birds.

But if you happened to miss the book, The Thorn Birds was also a hugely popular TV miniseries in the early 1980s .

The author of The Thorn Birds was Australian-n-born Colleen McCullough.

Just 4 years after the TV miniseries, I first met Colleen McCullough when she wrote a novella called The Ladies of MIasslonghi.

And I was as enthralled as I'm sure you're about to be by Colleen McCullough's Witt and Good humor.