The Godfather: Peter Corris on what’s in a name
Most readers will be familiar with Johnny Cash’s vengeful diatribe about the dirty, mangy dog who named his son Sue … First names go in and out of fashion. Few parents now would name a daughter Gertrude or a son Ernest but they were both once common –...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on dentists again
Some time ago I wrote about my experiences with dentists – how primitive the operations had been in the 1950s and 60s and how greatly they had been improved. In the early 1990s I had all my many amalgam fillings replaced with ceramics because it was widely believed...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on accents
All four of my grandparents spoke with regional British accents – Manx, north-country English and Scots. My parents spoke with mid-range Australian accents, neither – to use examples from the period – broad like the Labor leader Arthur Calwell, nor posh like the prime...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on disqualifications
Novelist, essayist, aspiring politician and wit Gore Vidal once proposed that no one who believed in an afterlife should be eligible for political office. Impractical, I know, but I completely agree; fantasists should not influence the affairs of mortal humans. With...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on retrospectives
A good number of authors who’ve employed series characters have written what are called in the business retrospectives – that is, stories that hark back to earlier events in their characters’ careers. John le Carré did so with Smiley’s People (1979), tracing previous...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on YouTube #2
Here is a further list of YouTube selections I play fairly often, sometimes when I hear of the deaths of the artists or I am reminded of them for one reason or another: ‘Blueberry Hill’ by Fats Domino. I once had an EP – that is, an extended-play 45-rpm record with...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on YouTube #1
Last year I wrote a column about our meagre CD collection and gave an account of some of my favourite recordings and their significance to me. These days, of course, it’s no longer necessary to own the discs because the works are available through YouTube and...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on voting
For the first time in my life I have been threatened with a fine for not voting in an election. This has caused me a little shame. I had to wait until I was 21 to vote (the voting age was not lowered to 18 until 1974), but ever since I’ve voted enthusiastically in...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on his best books of 2017
This year I’ve listened to 70 audio books and read two on my Kindle – very slowly, at about 25 words per screen and mostly in doctors’ waiting rooms. Here is a list of the five books I’ve valued most highly, in no order than that in which I came to them. The Romanovs,...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on the bushrangers project
In 1987 author, journalist and scriptwriter Robert Macklin had an idea for a television docu-drama on Australian bushrangers. He recruited six writers and, after consultation, each was assigned a bushranger. The writers and their subjects were: Jean Bedford (Captain...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on brushes with fame Part 2
Continuing from last week, here are some more famous and notable people I have met, however briefly. The Feminist – Germaine Greer said some complimentary things about my writing on a TV program so my publisher invited her to launch a Hardy novel at the Adelaide...
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