What does a biographer do when she discovers she has something wrong? I am not talking about a misinterpretation, but missing a great big whopping fact …

In this case, the new information did not concern my subject directly, but her mother. Nevertheless, it has caused me to rewrite parts of both the life and the myth of Charmian Clift.

In 2001, when my biography of Clift was first published, I gave a plenary paper titled ‘Lies and Silences’ at a biography conference organised by the National Library of Australia. Clift had warned – or perhaps boasted – that ‘All my family were tremendous liars and inventers and embroiderers’, but at that time I believed I had unpicked the embroidery and separated the lies from the facts, at least those regarding Clift’s mother, Amy Lila Currie (later Clift).