Murray Waldren
Murray Waldren has been a journalist at The Australian newspaper for 25 years, where his roles have included Literary Editor, Review Editor and Deputy Editor of The Australian Magazine. His literary rap sheet includes extensive author profiles and interviews, book reviews and columns, and he has written several books, among them Dining out with Mr Lunch, Moran V Moran and most recently The Mind and Times of Reg Mombassa. He is currently a judge for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and has been on judging panels for The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award, the NSW Premiers Award and the ABC Fiction Award. He also compiles the Literary Liaisons website.
Peter Goldsworthy justly commands a seat at the big table of the Australian hall of literary achievement. This was underlined on Australia Day with his gonging as a Member of the Order of Australia for service as an author and poet. It is a prize that should glitter comfortably on the mantelpiece alongside the likes of his South Australian Premier’s Award, his Commonwealth Poetry Prize, his Bice ... (read more)
Few who saw them will forget the grainy newspaper images of Australian drug traffickers Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers. Despite high-level diplomatic pleas from the Australian government, they were hanged at Pudu jail in Kuala Lumpur in July 1986 for possessing 180 grams of heroin. In the post-execution mêlée, their bodies were concealed by blankets, but one foot was casually left uncovered. Th ... (read more)
W
ith book thirty-one arriving as its author approaches his seventy-eighth birthday, the numbers are stacking up for Philip Roth. Yet while it is more than fifty years since his publishing début with Goodbye Columbus (1959), he seems to have locked on to an accelerating production line at a time when many of his contemporaries are in rocking chairs. That is an image with no relevance to Roth, gi ... (read more)
Jim McNeil was a two-bit thug. A liar, a thief, a recurrent wife-beater and bully, probably a murderer, definitely a racist, he was a man in whom psychotic rage was seldom remote. Contradictions were elemental to his character: he was intelligent and charismatic, yet obdurate and ratty. Violence and menace defined him, but he was at heart a coward. He meticulously planned armed robberies, but freq ... (read more)