Jack Egan

The Waugh Era by Greg Baum & 'One who will' by Jack Egan

November 2004, no. 266

Gideon Haigh reviews ‘The Waugh Era: The making of a cricket empire 1999-2004’ by Greg Baum, ‘“One who will”: The search for Steve Waugh’ by Jack Egan and ‘The Private Don’ By Christine Wal

‘Did you hear about the old man who turned 100?’ asked Sir Donald Bradman in a cheerful note to the journalist Johan Rivett in October 1968. ‘They asked him what it felt like. He said wonderful – I haven’t an enemy in the world. The buggers are all dead.’ That’s our Don: twenty years retired and still thinking in hundreds, eh? This century, it turned out, was one he could not overhaul: he was ninety-two when he died on 25 February 2001. But the job was done; the buggers were all dead. Bradman remains, to use Christine Wallace’s words from her new book The Private Don, ‘the best-ever player in the best-loved sport in the most sports-loving nation in the world’. Wallace’s book attests another quality: he remains a sporting media property without compeer.

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The Birth of Sydney edited by Tim Flannery & Buried Alive, Sydney 1788-92 by Jack Egan

by Robyn Annear •

April 2000, no. 219

Robyn Annear reviews 'The Birth of Sydney' edited by Tim Flannery and 'Buried Alive, Sydney 1788-92: Eyewitness accounts of the making of a nation' by Jack Egan

List of essentials for a trip to Sydney in 2000: airline ticket, style-repellent, a buddy at SOCOG, rather a lot of money, and, uh-oh, excess baggage alert. I’m afraid these two big paperbacks are a must. With the Olympics looming, an outbreak of books about Sydney was inevitable. But fear not, discerning readers. Jack Egan and Tim Flannery’s tributes to Australia’s first city are not the quick-and-slick kind. Opportunistic they may be, but you can tell they’re done with love.

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