by NRB | 25 Aug 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I once asked a friend who was suffering from some malady or other what he relied on to get better. ‘American chemicals,’ he said. Sceptical about homeopathy and alternative treatments, I was inclined to agree, but experience has taught me to be less definitive....
by NRB | 13 Jan 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
With Win, Lose or Draw from Allen & Unwin published on 3 January this year, I have produced my last book. Early reviews and notices suggest that it is in no way inferior to the 41 others in the Hardy series. So why stop? Certainly not because I tired of writing...
by NRB | 25 Mar 2016 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I’ve been commissioned to work on the autobiographies and memoirs of notable people six times. Five of these projects were completed with the books being published and one was aborted. Here are some notes on these exercises. I’ve written several times about working...
by NRB | 8 Jan 2016 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
There are things people say that stick with you – that you puzzle over, cherish, laugh at or adopt as your own for certain situations. I offer a few that have come my way. My mother, who was not given to philosophical pronouncements, once said of some behaviour...
by NRB | 31 Oct 2014 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
Fred Hollows started me running. At a party he poked my soft belly and told me I’d be dead before my time unless I lost weight and got fit. I felt mortified and challenged. I’d never been much of a runner – not particularly quick over the sprints and with no endurance...
by NRB | 24 Jan 2014 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
One of the few books in my parents’ house – the collection was kept in a hallway cupboard – was an edition of Henry Lawson’s short stories. Its publication was somehow sponsored by the Sun newspaper. I have no idea how my parents acquired it. Neither ever...
by NRB | 17 Jan 2014 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
It’s a cliché that lives can be changed by chance encounters. Many people meet their life partners through chance encounters it is said. I didn’t; apparently we were set up. But I’ve never ceased to be thankful. I owe my survival beyond, say, the age of 50, to a...
by NRB | 22 Nov 2013 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
An unusual book launch was held recently at Gleebooks, unusual in that three books were celebrated – novels by Michael Wilding and James Murray and a book of mine comprising three novellas. It was also unusual in that we had no launcher as a result of organisational...
by NRB | 11 Oct 2013 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
This is my 80th column for the NRB and time to reflect on the experience of column writing. I’ve had a somewhat similar gig once before – as a TV columnist for the National Times in what proved to be its dying days. It was money for jam; I was provided with a...
by NRB | 8 Feb 2013 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
A number of creative people have played golf. British Poet Laureate John Betjeman did and wrote a poem about it, the first line of which reads: ‘How straight it flew, how long it flew’. Betjeman, it is said, was more interested in how far he could hit the...
by NRB | 11 Jan 2013 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I’ve worked as a writer with some justly well-known and extraordinary people, like ophthalmologist Fred Hollows, feisty euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke and larrikin actor Bill Hunter. Much less well-known but equally extraordinary was anthropologist Roger...
by NRB | 7 Dec 2012 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I wonder if there are any authors who listen to their own work when it appears in the form of a talking book? Possibly the real egoists do. About twenty of my books have had the treatment, mostly Cliff Hardys, but at least one each in the Crawley and the Browning...
ANNA DOWNES Red River Road and LISA KENWAY All You Took From Me. Reviewed by Justine Ettler3 October 2024These two new crime thrillers from Australian writers Anna Downes and Lisa [ … ]
KATHERINE WILES No Autographs Please. Reviewed by Sally Nimon2 October 2024Katherine Wiles’ life as a professional opera singer seems glossed with [ … ]
ANTONIA PONT The Memory Library. Reviewed by Ann Skea1 October 2024Memories are not merely recounted in Antonia Pont’s novella. How would you like [ … ]
ALINA BELLCHAMBERS The Order of Masks. Reviewed by Amelia Dudley26 September 2024Spies, magic, intrigue, and the human cost of an expanding empire all feature [ … ]
