Andrew Lemon Andrew Lemon i(A28305 works by) (a.k.a. Andrew Grant Ferguson Lemon)
Born: Established: 1949 ;
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 y separately published work icon The Pebbled Beach at Pentecost : A Novel Andrew Lemon , Kew : Australian Scholarly Publishing , 2022 24714225 2022 single work novel historical fiction

'Vernon Lee Walker, a young Englishman from industrial Wolverhampton, meets his death on a beach on Pentecost Island in the South Pacific on the eve of Christmas 1887.

'Why did Vernon die, in what circumstances, and who was responsible? Was he, as once branded, simply a 'bad colonist'? Or was he a Candide, an innocent abroad, mixing invisibly with the rich and famous, manipulated by a calculating brother, unable to change the world around him?

'An historian finds Vernon's letters home to England, spanning a dozen years. With decreasing frequency, these follow his trajectory, first in Melbourne and Sydney, then as he yields to the spell of the Pacific. But what happens between the lines? Does he fall in love with his brother's wife? What does a boy not tell his mother?

'The novelist steps in. This is a unique fusion of authentic history and informed invention - a tragic story of colonialism in Australia and the Pacific, told with compassion, humour and a deep understanding of time and place.'  (Publication summary)

1 1 y separately published work icon The Master Gardener : A Biography of T. R. Garnett Andrew Lemon , Richmond : Hardie Grant Books , 2017 11643824 2017 single work biography

'Tommy Garnett, creator of the famous Garden of St Erth at Blackwood, Victoria, became one of Australia’s best-known garden writers, a rational crusader for plants, gardens and gardeners, birds, nature conservation and the environment. Few of his devoted readers knew anything of his life before the garden – the experiences that informed the wise, crisp, erudite, playful newspaper columns and books. Half of his long life – he died in 2006 aged 91 – was as an Englishman, half as an Australian. He was an innovative, controversial, successful head of two world-famous schools, England’s Marlborough College and Australia’s Geelong Grammar. Had he been a snob he could have boasted of his family’s literary connections or rattled off long lists of distinguished students, staff and colleagues who acknowledged his influence – poets, cricketers, princes, scholars, ornithologists, scientists, artists. Nor did he boast of his own sporting triumphs (first-class cricketer, British Eton Fives champion) or of his tough war years as a ground-based RAF squadron leader, decorated for service behind enemy lines, in Bengal and Burma. Born into wealth, thrown into penury, surviving as a scholarship boy, finding the love of his life after the war, Garnett was a man of accomplishment and wisdom, forever open to new insights and to new experiences. Australia reaped the benefit.' (Publication summary)

1 An Historical Cannon Andrew Lemon , 2016 single work biography
— Appears in: The La Trobe Journal , March no. 97 2016; (p. 24-27)
'Academic historians, being human, are inclined to be jealous of popular authors and journalists who turn their hand to history and achieve sales and celebrity. The animosity – sometimes deserved, sometimes not – is most often expressed not by direct attack but, rather, by the cold shoulder: by exclusion of the gilded authors and their books from mainstream academic discussion. Undergraduate students quickly learn of the gaucherie of footnoting the works of such writers in history essays (Patsy Adam-Smith’s groundbreaking The Anzacs (1978) is a notable example). Yet, the amateur historian, the journalist and the populist have more often than not been leaders of public discussion in matters historical. Ernest Scott, appointed professor of history at the University of Melbourne in 1913 and pioneer of the academic study of Australian history, held no university degree and was previously a journalist and parliamentary Hansard reporter. It just happened that he was an original researcher, a fine mind and a good storyteller.' (24)
1 The State Library of Victoria : The Perfumed Jargon Andrew Lemon , 1991 single work criticism
— Appears in: Meanjin , Winter-Spring vol. 50 no. 2-3 1991; (p. 259-264)
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