Cirrus@Austlit

'It was 30 years ago, but you can still feel the anger rising off the page. Writer Peter Carey and theatre producer Mike Mullins were working together on a big-budget musical for the 1986 Adelaide Festival of the Arts, a “political, surrealistic rock pantomime”, in one critic’s description, called Illusion. The show would prove to be a famous flop. But Carey and Mullins’ collaboration was clearly unravelling, letter by typewritten letter, well before Illusion opened. “You accussed [sic] me of trying to blackmail you,” Carey protests, “… blackmail is so wide of the point as to be an insult.” “Now to the severity of your attack on my artistic integrity,” begins Mullins, in his fierce reply. Things only get worse when they start talking about each other’s wives.' (Introduction)

'A world-famous Australian writer, an inspiration to Robert Hughes and Clive James, a legendary war correspondent who also wrote bestselling histories of exploration and conservation . . . and yet forgotten? In this dazzling book, Thornton McCamish delves into the past to reclaim a remarkable figure, Alan Moorehead.

'As a reporter, Moorehead witnessed many of the great historical events of the mid-20th century: the Spanish Civil War and both world wars, Cold War espionage, and decolonisation in Africa. He debated strategy with Churchill and Gandhi, fished with Hemingway, and drank with Graham Greene, Ava Gardner and Truman Capote. As well as being a regular contributor to the New Yorker, in 1956 Moorehead wrote the first significant book about the Gallipoli campaign.

'With its countless adventures, its touch of jet-set glamour and its tragic arc, Moorehead’s story is a beguiling one. Thornton McCamish tells it as a quest – intimate, perceptive and superbly entertaining. His funny, ardent book reveals an extraordinary Australian and takes its place in a fresh tradition of contemporary biography.' (Publication summary)