Alister Kershaw

Alister Kershaw (1921–95) was a poet, writer, editor, and broadcaster, most well-known as a figure in Melbourne's bohemian circles of the 1940s and for being briefly suspected of having authored the 'Ern Malley' poems. He lived as an expatriate from 1947 on, becoming Richard Aldington's secretary (and literary executor) in London and publishing A History of the Guillotine (1958) while living in Paris (where he was also a correspondent for the ABC). One of the most accomplished satirists in Australian letters, he turned his pen to memoirs towards the end of his life.

Alister Kershaw reviews 'The Ern Malley Affair' by Michael Heyward

September 1993, no. 154 • 01 September 1993

Well I’m damned! Ern Malley of all people! It’s been fifty years since I last laid eyes on him. Seeing him again recalls my vanished youth as nothing else could. Angry Penguins, Cecily Crozier’s valiant Comment magazine, the ‘social realists’ upbraiding everyone like so many Marxist Savonarolas, the Jindyworobakians quarrelling with the ‘cosmopolitans’, the Contemporary Arts Society ... (read more)