Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Anne Pender Review of Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell, Half the Perfect World : Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955–1964
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'In 2016, I was one of a fortunate group of scholars who travelled to the Greek island of Hydra, to participate in a conference hosted by Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell. We gathered at the Bratsera Hotel, a renovated sponge factory located a short walk from the ferry terminal. After the fumes and noisy chaos of Athens the peace of carless Hydra with its pristine turquoise seas and mountain views was magnificent. The summer tourists were gone and we had the hotel to ourselves. Our group of scholars and writers, including Susan Johnson and Meaghan Delahunt, were entertained in the courtyard of the house that once belonged to George Johnston and Charmian Clift, a few streets up the hill from our lodgings, not far from the famous Douskos Taverna. A young Greek couple screened a documentary they had made about the two Australian writers who had made Hydra their home for nine years, as we sat outside under the grapevines in the evening. The Johnston–Clift house is almost unchanged since the 1960s but is now worth millions of euros. Hydra is close enough to Athens for daytrips and its proximity makes it highly attractive for wealthy Athenians as a weekend escape. There is not much to remind the visitor of the Australian writers, however, except that a few local people remember them, and it was a privilege to listen to their recollections at the conference. In fact, Leonard Cohen’s residency on the island, at the same time as Clift and Johnston, has eclipsed that of the Australians, with many a tourist climbing the steep hill through the labyrinth of alleyways in order to get a glimpse of the house in which Cohen wrote two of his books and lived with Marianne Ihlen. (Introduction)

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    y separately published work icon Australian Journal of Biography and History no. 3 April 2020 21209150 2020 periodical issue 'Australians have always been great travellers, not only internationally but between  Australian states and territories. Writing about Australian lives is thus a  biographical challenge when they transcend national and internal boundaries. It means that, when dealing with mobile subjects, biographers need to be nimble diachronically, because of changing locales over time, and synchronically because many Australians have not always seen themselves as bound to a particular place. Nonetheless, despite the problems of writing about mobile lives, the deft use of biography appeals as a means of examining individual life paths in their immediate contexts within the larger scales suggested by transnational historical practice. An abundance of books, edited volumes, and articles have followed individuals, families, and other collectives as they ‘career’ (to use the term adopted by Lambert and Lester in their influential 2006 volume, Colonial Lives Across the British Empire) around the globe.' (Malcolm Allbrook, Preface) 2020 pg. 167-171
Last amended 3 Mar 2021 14:05:06
167-171 Anne Pender Review of Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell, Half the Perfect World : Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955–1964small AustLit logo Australian Journal of Biography and History
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