Richard Johnstone

In 1961 a young Noeline Brown was playing in Terence Rattigan’s The Sleeping Prince (1954) at the Pocket Playhouse in Sydenham – ‘just across the Princes Highway from Tempe Tip’, as she characteristically locates it – when Vivien Leigh, on tour with the Old Vic, came to see a specially arranged Sunday evening performance. From the moment she emerged from the chauffeured limousine, Leigh ... (read more)

In ‘St Patrick’s College’ a poem that appears in his 1975 collection Immigrant Chronicle, Peter Skrzynecki recalls the last day of school, when ‘mass was offered up for our departing intentions’, after which the young Peter makes his way home, ‘taking the right-hand turn out of Edgar Street for good’. It is characteristic of Skrzynecki that he should locate such a crucial turning poi ... (read more)

We expect memoirs to be true – it is one of the main reasons we read them – but we have also grown accustomed over the years to the idea that, while the memoir may be true in spirit, events may not have happened exactly as described. Indeed, it is not unusual for the memoirist to include some prefatory remarks to that effect. Such caveats seem fair; we have come to see them as no more than ack ... (read more)