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A whisper to Hughes’s bawl

An admiring portrait of the art critic
by
April 2010, no 320

Robert Hughes: The Australian years by Patricia Anderson

Pandora Press, $59.95 pb, 344 pp

A whisper to Hughes’s bawl

An admiring portrait of the art critic
by
April 2010, no 320

The opening chapter of Robert Hughes’s memoir, Things I Didn’t Know (2006), may have persuaded readers that Australians are a mercenary, uncouth and ungrateful lot who love nothing more than a glistening athlete on a podium. Hughes had reason to be sensitive at this time, having eluded the ‘feather-foot’ on that desolate Western Australian highway in May 1999 and endured the trials that followed. He names two writers, Peter Craven and Catharine Lumby, who have stood by him, whereas others, he says, have sought to further their careers by denouncing him. To the former small but faithful posse can be added Patricia Anderson, who defies that great Australian tradition of ‘cutting down the tall poppy’ to celebrate Hughes’s achievements in this biography of his ‘Australian years’: from Hughes’s birth in 1938 until 1970, when Time magazine afforded him the opportunity at last to leave our shores.

Daniel Vuillermin reviews 'Robert Hughes: The Australian years' by Patricia Anderson

Robert Hughes: The Australian years

by Patricia Anderson

Pandora Press, $59.95 pb, 344 pp

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