Great Conversations features interviews with authors and writers, exploring books, writing and literary culture from Australia and the world.

Today's episode features Kate Grenville discussing her new novel A Room Made of Leaves.

Elizabeth Macarthur arrived in New South Wales aboard the convict ship Scarborough in 1790. The twenty four year gentlewoman had arrived with her husband, an officer in the New South Wales Corps. She would live in New South Wales until her death in 1850, playing a key role in establishing the wool industry that would occupy so much of early Australia.

Much of what we know of Elizabeth Macarthur comes from her letters to family in England. But what if there was more…

Kate Grenville’s A Room Made of Leaves opens up the possibility that Elizabeth Macarthur wrote a frank and potentially scandalous memoir of her life. Freed by death, distance and time this Elizabeth is able to reflect on her life and the folly and cruelties of the English invasion of what would come to be known as Australia.