Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Firing by Ninette Dutton

by
May 1995, no. 170

Firing by Ninette Dutton

Imprint/ETT, $17.95 pb

Firing by Ninette Dutton

by
May 1995, no. 170

A friend of mine remembers a reception during an Adelaide Festival of the Arts. It was a large gathering: visiting musicians, singers, actors and writers, members of the Adelaide establishment, people from the university. The hosts were Ninette and Geoffrey Dutton. My friend, a visitor from Sydney, was struck by the Duttons’ confidence and sophistication. They were a handsome couple, she recalls, entirely at ease with the famous people who had come to the Festival from many parts of the world.

Last year, Geoffrey Dutton published his autobiography, Out in the Open. It contains a detailed account of a patrician way of life: a life of considerable privilege and sufficient means to enjoy the benefits of fine houses, frequent travel, good cars, and a network of friends and acquaintances spread around the world. I suspect that nowadays many would regard such life as fundamentally un-Australian; and yet, for all that, both Ninette and Geoffrey were (and remain) proudly and uncompromisingly Australian.

Andrew Riemer reviews 'Firing' by Ninette Dutton

Firing

by Ninette Dutton

Imprint/ETT, $17.95 pb

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.