Cirrus@Austlit

'Peter Allen Ryan (1923–2015) was a talented, brave and complex man; in some quarters an Australian institution. As a 19-year-old soldier in World War Two he won the Military Medal and was Mentioned in Dispatches. Fear Drive My Feet, the book he wrote when he returned home from New Guinea, is recognised as perhaps Australia’s finest war memoir. In another life—and he had several—Ryan was Director of Melbourne University Press for 26 years. As a writer—his first and greatest interest—Ryan’s extraordinary output included nine books and some two million words, most of them produced by hand. His essays and columns were often controversial (as intended) but written with style, grace and wicked wit. It was said of Peter Ryan that he was incapable of writing an ugly sentence.' (Publication summary)

'It was a decade that changed journalism in Australia.

'Between 1966 and 1975 Melbourne’s Age newspaper was transformed by an inspirational editor, Graham Perkin. The venerable old broadsheet, founded in 1854, had already enjoyed a golden era in the 19th century under the legendary David Syme. Now, led by his great-grandson Ranald Macdonald and edited by Perkin, it began a second golden period. The changes they drove – from investigative reporting to design and marketing initiatives – impacted on the newspaper industry around the country. As it had under David Syme, The Age, once again, enjoyed an international reputation.

'This memoir is unashamedly a celebration of a remarkable period at The Age and recalls many of the people who were fortunate enough to work for the newspaper under Perkin and Macdonald.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A veteran journalist once said of Creighton Burns that he possessed the qualities of a natural reporter: curiosity, courage and an ability to get along with colleagues and contacts. Another contemporary described him as a 'class act' in the rough and tumble world of newspapers.

'Although best known as a courageous editor of the Age throughout the 1980s, Burns, in fact, pursued three careers - academic, foreign correspondent and newspaper editor. In each of them he distinguished himself. He also wrote two books on political topics and was the 1949 Rhodes Scholar for Victoria.

'Class Act: A Life of Creighton Burns is the story of this engaging and accomplished Australian who joined the navy as a 17-year-old recruit in 1942 and finished his working life as a University Chancellor more than 50 years later.' (From the publisher's website.)