Author: ANN. BLAINEYPublisher:
ISBN: 9780369318695
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
King of the Air
Author: Ann BlaineyPublisher: Black Inc.
ISBN: 1743820712
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 442
Book Description
A revealing portrait of a brilliant and troubled figure – a daredevil of the sky Charles Kingsford Smith was the most commanding flyer of the golden age of aviation. In three short years, he broke records with his astounding and daring voyages: the first trans-Pacific flight from America to Australia, the first circumnavigation around the equator, the first non-stop crossing of the Australian mainland. He did it all with such courage, modesty and charm that Australia and the world fell in love with him. He became a national hero, ‘Our Smithy’. Yet his achievements belied a traumatic past. He had witnessed the horror of World War I – first as a soldier at Gallipoli, later as a combat pilot with the Royal Flying Corps – and, like so many of his generation, he bore physical and emotional scars. The public saw the derring-do; only those close to him knew the anxious man who pushed himself to the edge of health and sanity. In November 1935, Kingsford Smith’s plane crashed and he was lost at sea near Burma, his body never to be recovered. This brilliant work from one of Australia’s foremost biographers reveals the complicated, tumultuous life of a fascinating figure, who pursued his obsession to the greatest heights of fame and catastrophe Ann Blainey is the author of the acclaimed I Am Melba, which won the 2009 National Biography Award and was the most popular book in the 2009 State Library of Victoria Summer Reads program. Her other books include biographies of Leigh Hunt and the Kemble sisters. ‘Brilliant ... Blainey’s fascinating book focuses on the inner as well as the outer man. While Smithy’s career highlights may be well known, his ambiguous relationship with fame, his drinking, and his doubts and fears were not. In this beautifully written, scrupulously researched and meticulously indexed work, Blainey has filled this gap to perfection.’ —Ross Fitzgerald, The Weekend Australian 'Crisply written ... Even people not particularly interested in the feats of aviators will find this book an engrossing read.' —Jim Davidson, The Sydney Morning Herald ‘Blainey is a pleasure to read and this biography is superbly researched’ —Michael McGirr, Australian Book Review
King of the Air
Author: Ann BlaineyPublisher:
ISBN: 9780369355249
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 878
Book Description
A revealing portrait of a brilliant and troubled figure - a daredevil of the skies Charles Kingsford Smith was the most commanding flyer of the golden age of aviation. In three short years, he broke records with his astounding and daring voyages: the first trans-Pacific flight from America to Australia, the first flight across the Tasman, the first non-stop crossing of the Australian mainland. He did it all with such courage, modesty and charm that Australia and the world fell in love with him. A tickertape parade was held in his honour on New York's Fifth Avenue. At home, he became a national hero, 'Our Smithy'. Yet his achievements belied a traumatic past. He had witnessed the horror of World War I - first as a soldier at Gallipoli, later as a combat pilot with the Royal Flying Corps - and, like so many of his generation, he bore physical and emotional scars. The public saw the derring-do; only those close to him knew the anxious, troubled individual who pushed himself to the edge of health and sanity. In November 1935, Kingford Smith's plane crashed and he was lost at sea near Burma, his body never to be recovered. This brilliant work from one of Australia's foremost biographers reveals the complicated, tumultuous life of a fascinating figure, who pursued his obsession to the greatest heights of fame and catastrophe.
Dictionary of World Biography
Author: Barry JonesPublisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 1760465526
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1005
Book Description
Jones, Barry Owen (1932– ). Australian politician, writer and lawyer, born in Geelong. Educated at Melbourne High School and Melbourne University, he was a public servant, high school teacher, television and radio performer, university lecturer and lawyer before serving as a Labor MP in the Victorian Parliament 1972–77 and the Australian House of Representatives 1977–98. He took a leading role in reviving the Australian film industry and abolishing the death penalty in Australia, and was the first politician to raise public awareness of global warming, the ‘post‑industrial’ society, the IT revolution, biotechnology, the rise of ‘the Third Age’ and the need to preserve Antarctica as a wilderness. In the *Hawke Government, he was Minister for Science 1983–90, Prices and Consumer Affairs 1987, Small Business 1987–90 and Customs 1988–90. He became a member of the Executive Board of UNESCO, Paris 1991–95 and National President of the Australian Labor Party 1992–2000, 2005–06. He was Deputy Chairman of the Constitutional Convention 1998. His books include Decades of Decision 1860– (1965), Joseph II (1968) and Age of Apocalypse (1975), and he edited The Penalty Is Death (1968, revised and expanded 2022). Sleepers, Wake! Technology and the Future of Work was published by Oxford University Press in 1982, became a bestseller and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Swedish and braille. The fourth edition was published in 1995. Knowledge Courage Leadership: Insights & Reflections, a collection of speeches and essays, appeared in 2016. He received a DSc in 1988 for his services to science and a DLitt in 1993 for his work on information theory. Elected FTSE (1992), FAHA (1993), FAA (1996) and FASSA (2003), he is the only person to have become a Fellow of four of Australia’s five learned Academies. Awarded an AO in 1993, named as one of Australia’s 100 ‘living national treasures’ in 1997, he was elected a Visiting Fellow Commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1999. His autobiography, A Thinking Reed, was published in 2006 and The Shock of Recognition, about music and literature, in 2016. In 2014 he received an AC for services ‘as a leading intellectual in Australian public life’. What Is to Be Done was published by Scribe in 2020.
I Am Melba
Author: Ann BlaineyPublisher: Black Inc.
ISBN: 192182543X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 410
Book Description
The story of an Australian girl who defied convention and became the most famous singer of her era. Growing up in Melbourne, Nellie Mitchell dreamed of fame, but her devout father disapproved. When a chance arose to go to Paris, she trusted in her musical talent and hoped for a lucky break. Within a few years, reborn as Nellie Melba, she was performing to overflowing concert halls, hobnobbing with European royalty and collaborating with some of the most renowned composers of the age. Audiences swooned over the 'heavenly pleasures' of her voice, while the public showed an insatiable appetite for news of her sometimes passionate private life. Dame Nellie Melba was Australia's first international superstar. In this important biography, enhanced by new research, Ann Blainey captures the exuberance, controversy and pathos of Melba's remarkable career. Winner of the 2009 National Biography Award. Shortlisted, 2008 Age Book of the Year Awards. ‘Blainey ... writes with clarity and panache. This is an entertaining biography. Everyone should read it and be reminded of what a remarkable singer we once had in our midst.’ —Sydney Morning Herald ‘There have been five biographies of Melba, together with her own rather fanciful memoirs; but the present one by Ann Blainey is superior to them all.’ —The Age ‘Thoroughly researched, excellently written and beguilingly human biography of Nellie Melba’ —Australian Book Review ‘Blainey brings a freshness to the story, giving us the feeling that we are reading about a life in progress.’ —Good Reading ‘Welcome and timely, shedding new light on the diva’ —Courier Mail ‘This is a gripping story of triumph and sorrow.’ —Sun-Herald ‘Meticulously researched biography’ —The Australian Ann Blainey is the author of I Am Melba. She has written five biographies, and her most recent biography of Dame Nellie Melba reflects her fascination with singing and opera. She has served on the council of two Australian opera companies and of the Percy Grainger Museum in Melbourne, where she lives.
The Oxford Companion to Australian History
Author: Graeme DavisonPublisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 746
Book Description
"The Companion contains approximately 1600 entries, ranging from essays of up to 2000 words to succinct, factual entries of 100 words. There are entries on politicians, colonisers, visionaries, newspaper barons, industrialists, explorers, writers, artists, and scientists. All the most famous Australians appear in the Companion, including Don Bradman, Ned Kelly, John Curtin, Joan Sutherland, and Patrick White. There are entries on the states, key institutions, prominent families, and famous or infamous events, such as Gallipoli, the Dismissal, the Rum Rebellion, and the Waterloo Creek Massacre. There are numerous extended essays on key facets of our national life - political, social, cultural, scientific, military, and economic. Readers will find incisive entries on matters such as art, capital punishment, gambling, language, literature, military history, and republicanism."--BOOK JACKET.
The Man Who Saved Smithy
Author: Rick SearlePublisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1925267806
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
Patrick Gordon 'Bill' Taylor was a pioneer of Australian aviation. As a fighter pilot during the First World War, he was awarded the Military Cross and discovered a life-long passion for flight and air navigation. Returning to Australia after the war, he became a close friend of Charles Kingsford Smith; they went on to form an incredible flying partnership, setting records around the globe. It was on a flight across the Tasman in Smithy's famous Southern Cross that Taylor earned the Empire's highest award for civilian bravery, the George Cross. With one engine out of action and another fast running out of oil, Taylor repeatedly climbed out of the cockpit to transfer oil to the stricken engine and keep the Southern Cross flying - all this while suspended over the sea in a howling slipstream. After the deaths of his friends Charles Ulm and Kingsford Smith in separate accidents, Taylor became Australia's greatest surviving aviator, pioneering vital new trans-oceanic air routes during the Second World War and receiving a knighthood in honour of his services to flight. The Man Who Saved Smithy is the enthralling account of his remarkable life and achievements.
The Social Life of Coffee
Author: Brian CowanPublisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300133502
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Book Description
What induced the British to adopt foreign coffee-drinking customs in the seventeenth century? Why did an entirely new social institution, the coffeehouse, emerge as the primary place for consumption of this new drink? In this lively book, Brian Cowan locates the answers to these questions in the particularly British combination of curiosity, commerce, and civil society. Cowan provides the definitive account of the origins of coffee drinking and coffeehouse society, and in so doing he reshapes our understanding of the commercial and consumer revolutions in Britain during the long Stuart century. Britain’s virtuosi, gentlemanly patrons of the arts and sciences, were profoundly interested in things strange and exotic. Cowan explores how such virtuosi spurred initial consumer interest in coffee and invented the social template for the first coffeehouses. As the coffeehouse evolved, rising to take a central role in British commercial and civil society, the virtuosi were also transformed by their own invention.
Author: The River in the Sky
Author: Clive JamesPublisher: Picador
ISBN: 1760782416
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 123
Book Description
Clive James has been close to death for several years, and he has written about the experience in a series of deeply moving poems. In Sentenced to Life, he was clear-sighted as he faced the end, honest about his regrets. In Injury Time, he wrote about living well in the time remaining, focusing our attention on the joys of family and art, and celebrating the immediate beauty of the world. When The River in the Sky opens, we find James in ill health but high spirits. Although his body traps him at home, his mind is free to roam, and this long poem is animated by his recollection of what life was and never will be again; as it resolves into a flowing stream of vivid images, his memories are emotionally supercharged ‘by the force of their own fading’. In this form, the poet can transmit the felt experience of his exceptional life to the reader. As ever with James, his enthusiasm is contagious; he shares his wide interests with enormous generosity, making brilliant and original connections, sparking passion in the reader so that you can explore the world’s treasures yourself. Because this is not just a reminiscence, it’s a wise and moving preparation for and acceptance of death. As James realizes that he is only one bright spot in a galaxy of stars, he passes the torch to the poets of the future, to his young granddaughter, and to you, his reader. A book that could not have been written by anyone else, this is Clive James at the height of his considerable powers: funny, wise, deeply felt, and always expressed with an unmatched power for clarity of expression and phrase-making that has been his been his hallmark.
