Cirrus@Austlit

'Award-winning Australian author Peter Thompson evokes the now-vanished world he encountered on joining ‘Cudlipp’s Circus’ at the Daily Mirror in 1966, bringing to life the days when Fleet Street was the front-page equivalent of Dodge City and its pubs shuddered to the midnight roar of mighty rotary presses. The Mirror’s daily quota of mischief, mayhem and madness attracted journalists from all over the globe. The columnist Cassandra called this convergence of talent ‘Cudlipp’s Circus’ after its ringmaster, the great tabloid editor Hugh Cudlipp

'The author was night editor and deputy editor of the Daily Mirror, editor of the Sunday Mirror and a director of Mirror Group Newspapers. He describes the Mirror scene in its heyday from the baroque splendour of the chairman’s office to its fabled pub, the Stab in the Back, and tells the inside story of the paper’s great scoops, love affairs, vanities and vendettas.

'But Cudlipp’s Circus is much more than a classic tale of newspaper life appealing to journalists and the general reader everywhere. Written in the age of the Leveson inquiry following public revulsion over the News of the World’s hacking of the mobile phone of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, it examines the acquisition of press power and its abuse through the lives of the four newspaper barons for whom the author worked: Cecil King, Hugh Cudlipp, Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch.

'Drawing on his extensive archive of documents, diaries and interviews with many of the great names in post-war journalism, Thompson has written an explosive memoir of extraordinary power, depth and perception, encompassing his experiences in the Australian media in the early Sixties and moving to London for the epic battle between the Daily Mirror and The Sun - a blood feud that came to symbolize the decline and fall of Fleet Street itself.' (Publication summary)

Wesfarmers today [2014] is a $50 billion business embracing the Coles Group, Bunnings, Target, Kmart, the Curragh and Bengalla coalmines, and other national retailers and services. Based on interviews with scores of past and present staff and the families of the company’s founding fathers, Wesfarmers 100 : The People’s Story 1914–2014, highlights the many surprising, sometimes controversial and always colourful events that accompanied the co-operative on its extraordinary journey.

'The story of an Aussie hero who became the most famous and influential journalist reporting for The Times on China before, during and after the Boxer Rebellion.

'The Man Who Died Twice is the compelling story of Morrison of Peking', who bestrode continents, helped bring down a dynasty and chronicled his times so brilliantly that he not only wrote history but changed it as well.

'George Ernest Morrison's strong sense of courage and devotion to reporting the truth led him, at only 20, to expose the Australian Kanaka slave trade. He then walked, alone and unaided, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Melbourne only 21 years after explorers Burke and Wills had perished in the same endeavour. And in attempting the first crossing of New Guinea, he was almost killed in an ambush which left two spear tips embedded in his body.

'However, it was Morrison's work as a correspondent for the London Times in the decadent and dangerous Chinese capital at the turn of the century that brought him international fame, not least when he helped to organise the defence of the legations during the 55-day siege of the Boxer Uprising. Then, as adviser to the fledgling Chinese government, he was a pivotal figure in the fall of the last Emperor and the birth of the Chinese Republic.

'Peter Thompson and Robert Macklin have written a powerful and gripping biography of an Australian journalist and adventurer who paused only to tell his stories and to plan his next foray among the great events and leading figures of his day.' (Publication summary)