The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli is a fascinating biographical investigation into the life of Harry Freame - a half Australian, half Japanese military Scout who defied the odds at the front in some of the most vicious fighting of World War One. Some believe he deserved the VC for his bravery but was denied because of being partly Asian.

 

After the war Harry faces a new challenge: becoming a soldier settler and orchardist. This proves to be harder than war, while his family life is messy and puzzling. Much later, at an age when many would be contemplating retirement, he is recruited into Australian intelligence, but totally unprepared for the role. His cause of death is disputed and he is denied a military headstone.

 

When he discovers this final injustice, author Ryan Butta becomes indignant and goes beyond the role of biographer to intervene on behalf of Harry and those like him who never got the acknowledgement they deserved.

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To mark the sesquicentenary of Jane Austen’s birth, this episode is an edited version of an event for Sydney Writers Festival.

 

Speakers are scholar of English literature Professor William Christie, bestselling author Jane Caro and First Nations author Larissa Behrendt.

 

Each of them celebrates different facets of their admiration for Jane Austen in terms of her characters, and her social commentary on class, entitlement, her love of nature, and the dynamics of family.

 

To learn more about Jane Austen I recommend Paula Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen - a life in small things

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In 2024 a story appeared in the Toronto Star by Deborah Dundas that set the world of biography on fire. At the centre of it was Alice Munro’s biographer Robert Thacker, who has devoted thirty years of his life as an academic to a close archival study of Alice Munro’s work.

 

It was revealed that Thacker had known for two decades that Alice’s daughter Andrea had been sexually molested by her stepfather Gerald Fremlin. When Andrea approached Thacker to ask him to make revisions to the manuscript of his book, in the light of this information, it was just at the point when the manuscript was complete and about to be printed, and he declined. He declined again when a revised edition of the book appeared several years later. He has always maintained that as an archival scholar, he had no interest in personal family dynamics and in the psychological aspects of Alice’s oeuvre.

 

Gerald Fremlin pled guilt to a charge of indecent assault and served a suspended sentence with two years probation. Alice Munro chose to remain with Fremlin rather than support her daughter.

 

In this episode Caroline Baum talks to Robert Thacker and explores the uncomfortable moral terrain of a biographer when presented with explosive material that they feel is beyond the scope of their particular focus and asks where does the biographer’s responsibility lies.

 

To read an in-depth account of Andrea Skinner’s experience and its repercussions for her, for Alice Munro and for Munro’s reading public, go to the excellent piece by New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/30/alice-munros-passive-voice

 

There is also an essay by Anne Enright in her latest anthology Attention, on the Munro affair.

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Dominic Amerena is a rising young Australian writer who has chosen a biographer as the central figure in his novel I Want Everything.

His ambitious, unnamed narrator recognises an older woman at the city baths one day as Brenda Shales, a writer who was famous for two incendiary novels before disappearing from public view. Recognising an opportunity, he works his way into her confidence and she agrees to tell him her story. He sees fame and fortune in his future. His girlfriend Ruth, also a writer, but who is already enjoying success, is not so sure.

Dominic Amerena discusses the influences and ideas underpinning his mischievous plot.

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In a first for Life Sentences, host Caroline Baum welcomes a panel of four Australian biographers to discuss the biographies they have read and enjoyed recently.

-Ryan Butta chooses Anthony Sharwood’s hybrid travelogue biography of Polish freedom fighter Tadeusz Kosciusko and also mentions Didion and Babitz, by Lili Anolik, which compares the lives of two gifted writers on the LA scene of the Sixties.

-Susan Wyndham chooses Vicki Hastrich’s The Last Days of Zane Grey about the flamboyantly successful American big game fishing legend who was also a bestselling author with a complicated love life.

-Bernadette Brennan chooses Drusilla Modjeska’s important new group biography of European and American modernist female artists who have been largely overlooked or eclipsed by male partners.

-Anthony Sharwood chooses Ryan Butta’s The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli, about the mysterious Harry Freame, an Australian war hero who was half Japanese and raised in the code of the samurai.

Caroline makes reference to the new biography of former Governor General Quentin Bryce, and to reading the doorstop epic new biography of Mark Twain by Ron Chernow. 

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Past biographies have always dismissed Pamela Harriman as a socialite who slept her way to the top, in a series of affairs and marriages that boosted her thirst for power.

 

But Sonia Purnell argues persuasively that Harriman was in fact one of the most significant diplomats of the 20th century and that her motives were always those of ensuring peace and the best possible outcomes for the UK, the US and the world. She deployed her charms and incredible power of seduction on everyone from Randolph Churchill to Gianni Agnelli, the Aga Khan, Ed Murrow, Bill Paley and Averell Harriman, moving from politics to the world of Broadway by marrying producer Leland Heyward and hosting a salon in Washington that became the epicentre of the world of intelligence and refinement. Even the Russians were not immune to her charms.

 

How did a minor British aristo with no formal education come to be so influential? Purnell’s juicy biography, Kingmaker, is a fascinating and deliciously gossipy but serious portrait of a bygone world of glamour and intrigue, high stakes secrets, scandalous love affairs and strategic partnerships in and out of the bedroom of one of the world’s most intriguing women.

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Past biographies have always dismissed Pamela Harriman as a socialite who slept her way to the top, in a series of affairs and marriages that boosted her thirst for power.

 

But Sonia Purnell argues persuasively that Harriman was in fact one of the most significant diplomats of the 20th century and that her motives were always those of ensuring peace and the best possible outcomes for the UK, the US and the world. She deployed her charms and incredible power of seduction on everyone from Randolph Churchill to Gianni Agnelli, the Aga Khan, Ed Murrow, Bill Paley and Averell Harriman, moving from politics to the world of Broadway by marrying producer Leland Heyward and hosting a salon in Washington that became the epicentre of the world of intelligence and refinement. Even the Russians were not immune to her charms.

 

How did a minor British aristo with no formal education come to be so influential? Purnell’s juicy biography, Kingmaker, is a fascinating and deliciously gossipy but serious portrait of a bygone world of glamour and intrigue, high stakes secrets, scandalous love affairs and strategic partnerships in and out of the bedroom of one of the world’s most intriguing women.

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Race Matthews had a distinguished career as a federal politician and Victorian state Minister, but the highlight of his career was his time as Gough Whitlam’s Principal Private Secretary. 

 

A joiner from a very early age, he understood the power of working within an organisation to bring about change but his ambitions for reform and social justice were often thwarted years ago factional in-fighting. He remained a passionate advocate for Fabian values and collectivism.

 

His second wife, Iola, a journalist with several books to her name, decided to complete her husband’s memoir as a biography when ill health made the task impossible for him. The result is a loving, considered account of Race’s career and her experience of being a political wife.

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Painter Charles Blackman described himself as a guttersnipe when he met and fell in love with partially sighted poet Barbara Patterson.

 

Together, the couple became part of a bohemian crowd of artists who moved between Sydney and Melbourne, and helped shape Australian art for decades.

 

Now their daughter Christabel has documented a significant, passionate and fruitful decade of their early years and marriage, thanks to her parents love letters and her mother’s diaries.

 

The result is a uniquely personal and intimate perspective on a creative partnership.

 

To see images from Charles and Barbara Blackman a decade of love and art, go to: @carobaumlifesentences on Instagram

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Recorded live as part of Sydney Writers Festival 2024, this is a three way conversation between three biographers - Nadia Wheatley, Brigitta Olubas and Susan Wyndham - about three literary legends: Charmian Clift, Shirley Hazzard, Elizabeth Harrower - three writers who experienced the twentieth century very differently but who overlapped in shared perspectives on their home country, Australia, and its ability to fulfil its potential.

While both Hazzard and Clift spent large parts of their lives overseas, Harrower mostly stayed home, sharing an extensive correspondence with Hazzard. Clift, meanwhile, shared her thoughts on issues both frivolous and serious with her devoted readers in a regular weekly newspaper column, as well as in her books.

While Hazzard achieved literary glory internationally, Clift and Harrower found success, to varying degrees, at home. All three are in print today.

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