Life Sentences Podcast

Past biographies have always dismissed Pamela Harriman as a socialite who slept her way to the top, in a series of affairs and marriages that boosted her thirst for power.   But Sonia Purnell argues persuasively that Harriman was in fact one of the most significant diplomats of the 20th century and that her motives were always those of ensuring peace and the best possible outcomes for the UK, the US and the world. She deployed her charms and incredible power of seduction on everyone from Randolph Churchill to Gianni Agnelli, the Aga Khan, Ed Murrow, Bill Paley and Averell Harriman, moving from politics to the world of Broadway by marrying producer Leland Heyward and hosting a salon in Washington that became the epicentre of the world of intelligence and refinement. Even the Russians were not immune to her charms.   How did a minor British aristo with no formal education come to be so influential? Purnell’s juicy biography, Kingmaker, is a fascinating and deliciously gossipy but serious portrait of a bygone world of glamour and intrigue, high stakes secrets, scandalous love affairs and strategic partnerships in and out of the bedroom of one of the world’s most intriguing women.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Past biographies have always dismissed Pamela Harriman as a socialite who slept her way to the top, in a series of affairs and marriages that boosted her thirst for power.   But Sonia Purnell argues persuasively that Harriman was in fact one of the most significant diplomats of the 20th century and that her motives were always those of ensuring peace and the best possible outcomes for the UK, the US and the world. She deployed her charms and incredible power of seduction on everyone from Randolph Churchill to Gianni Agnelli, the Aga Khan, Ed Murrow, Bill Paley and Averell Harriman, moving from politics to the world of Broadway by marrying producer Leland Heyward and hosting a salon in Washington that became the epicentre of the world of intelligence and refinement. Even the Russians were not immune to her charms.   How did a minor British aristo with no formal education come to be so influential? Purnell’s juicy biography, Kingmaker, is a fascinating and deliciously gossipy but serious portrait of a bygone world of glamour and intrigue, high stakes secrets, scandalous love affairs and strategic partnerships in and out of the bedroom of one of the world’s most intriguing women.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Race Matthews had a distinguished career as a federal politician and Victorian state Minister, but the highlight of his career was his time as Gough Whitlam’s Principal Private Secretary.    A joiner from a very early age, he understood the power of working within an organisation to bring about change but his ambitions for reform and social justice were often thwarted years ago factional in-fighting. He remained a passionate advocate for Fabian values and collectivism.   His second wife, Iola, a journalist with several books to her name, decided to complete her husband’s memoir as a biography when ill health made the task impossible for him. The result is a loving, considered account of Race’s career and her experience of being a political wife.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Painter Charles Blackman described himself as a guttersnipe when he met and fell in love with partially sighted poet Barbara Patterson.   Together, the couple became part of a bohemian crowd of artists who moved between Sydney and Melbourne, and helped shape Australian art for decades.   Now their daughter Christabel has documented a significant, passionate and fruitful decade of their early years and marriage, thanks to her parents love letters and her mother’s diaries.   The result is a uniquely personal and intimate perspective on a creative partnership.   To see images from Charles and Barbara Blackman a decade of love and art, go to: @carobaumlifesentences on InstagramSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Recorded live as part of Sydney Writers Festival 2024, this is a three way conversation between three biographers - Nadia Wheatley, Brigitta Olubas and Susan Wyndham - about three literary legends: Charmian Clift, Shirley Hazzard, Elizabeth Harrower - three writers who experienced the twentieth century very differently but who overlapped in shared perspectives on their home country, Australia, and its ability to fulfil its potential. While both Hazzard and Clift spent large parts of their lives overseas, Harrower mostly stayed home, sharing an extensive correspondence with Hazzard. Clift, meanwhile, shared her thoughts on issues both frivolous and serious with her devoted readers in a regular weekly newspaper column, as well as in her books. While Hazzard achieved literary glory internationally, Clift and Harrower found success, to varying degrees, at home. All three are in print today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anthony Sharwood set out to investigate how Australia’s highest peak comes to be named after an eighteenth century freedom fighter and military engineer, Taddeusz Koszciuscko. The result is an unorthodox hybrid he describes as a travelography. The result is much more than a portrait of a remarkable figure of enlightenment and progressive ideals, whose influence was felt from his native Poland to America, where his will was a vexed issue for his friend Thomas Jefferson.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The official history of Australia may have forgotten colourful rogues like Tom Ley, but Mudgee painter Michael Bourke has painted a biographical suite of scenes that tell his life story in almost cartoonish images. He talks to Caroline Baum about how Tom Ley became known as Lemonade Ley and how he rose from abject poverty to become a Minister in the NSW government, before travelling to London and being accused of murder. It sounds like fiction, but it’s all true.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Caroline Hodgson took the name Madame Brussels to become the ‘flash madam’ of Melbourne in the post Gold Rush era. Her business sense for buying real estate and flair for style and comfort attracted the big end of town, as well as the attention of the press. As well as running a brothel, she was a wife and a mother, a fascinating character who showed care and consideration for her employees. Her biographer Barbara Minchinton uncovers her story through a mix of archaeology, a photo album and the sleuthing skills of a feminist historian.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Caroline Baum interviewed Fleet Street veteran royal correspondent Robert Jobson about his new, very favourable biography of Katherine, Princess of Wales, the conversation did not go as planned.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For decades, Kitty Kelley has held the reputation as the queen of celebrity biography in the US, writing juicy and revealing accounts of the lives of Jackie Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, The Bush family, Nancy Reagan etc.   Now in her eighties, she reflects on how she got started as a journalist in Washington DC, and reveals some of the tricks and techniques that she used to get reliable sources to talk to her while avoiding prosecution from her powerful subjects. In this candid and revealing conversation she talks about the rewards and downsides of a unique career as the world’s bestselling biographer.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Donald Horne was Australia’s leading public intellectual in the sixties and seventies and coined the phrase The Lucky Country in his bestselling book of the same title. The phrase has entered the Australian vernacular, and is often misused and interpreted as a sign of national complacency.   Before he became an author, Horne had tried on many hats: as a journalist, ad man, and editor; later he became an academic and a bureaucrat. The big story in his life was his political shift from the conservative right to the progressive left, thanks to his enthusiasm for Gough Whitlam’s vision of Australia’s potential.   Famous for his love of a long lunch (especially when he was the editor of the Bulletin), he was indeed lucky to find in his second wife Myfanwy a partner who was a true collaborator in all his ideas.   Ryan Cropp’s energetic debut biography captures the paradoxes and many-faceted ambitions of the man and his times.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There has never been anyone like Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev.   The Russian impresario shook up the dusty world of ballet, making it the centre of the avant garde in the early part of the twentieth century, especially in Paris where the premieres of L’Apres Midi ‘D’un Faune and the Rite of Spring caused shock and scandal.   Born in a provincial backwater, Diaghilev made his way to St Petersburg with ambitions as a painter and composer, but failed at both. Eventually he discovered that his talents were more curatorial and, after bringing Russian art to Paris, he returned with The Ballets Russes, a troupe of brilliant dancers, including Nijinski, and gorgeous sets and costumes, taking the city by storm.   Collaborating with artists like Picasso and Stravinsky, Diaghilev changed the face of dance forever. He defined the word impresario in a unique way, discovering talent, finding the money to stage lavish productions and generating huge audience excitement, in a dizzying feat of risk-taking and flair.   In this episode, British cultural critic Rupert Christensen discusses his book Diaghilev’s Empire, about the impact, influence and legacy of a larger than life individual who loved Russia but was condemned by history to a life in exile.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Recorded in the lead up the UK election of 2024, this is a conversation with Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer’s biographer, journalist and former Labour insider Tom Baldwin. He explains how the biography was written with Starmer’s co-operation but was not authorised by him and how Starmer learns things from the book that he did not expect, but feels uncomfortable with some of the details about his complex family relationships.   What emerges is a portrait of a relentless, hardworking details man, who consults, listens and is outcome focussed. A man who is not political in the traditional sense, but who has leadership skills and who values of integrity and decency but is not always good at playing the media game. He’d much rather play football with his old mates.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most people are unaware of the existence of the Australian Dictionary of National Biography, a remarkable effort of scholarship by an army of volunteer historians and specialist contributors committed to documenting significant and representative Australians. It’s a challenging task in terms not only of scale but because previous entries need to be revised in the light of fresh historical evidence and interpretation. Women and First Nations figures were overlooked when the project began, but that is now being addressed.   The Director of the National Dictionary of Biography is historian Dr Melanie Nolan. She tells Life Sentences how the Dictionary differs from its British counterpart, how entries are selected and how the Dictionary is trying to move with the times.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To fully enjoy this episode, it is recommended that you watch the documentary Turn Every Page about the unique working relationship between biography giant Robert Caro and his editor of fifty years, Robert Gottlieb.   Robert Caro is regarded by many as the greatest biographer of his generation, thanks to the ambition, scope and meticulous detail of his 1974 best selling biography The Power Broker, about Robert Moses, the unscrupulous developer who built the New York we know today.   Now 88, he is currently at work on the eagerly awaited fifth volume of his biography of President Lyndon Johnson.   Robert Gottlieb is a former editor of the New Yorker and has edited many of the greats of twentieth century American literature from Joseph Heller to Toni Morrison. His partnership with Robert Caro was a unique relationship between author and editor that never translated into a personal friendship outside of work.   Lizzie Gottlieb, Robert Gottlieb’s daughter, was given unprecedented access to the very shy, modest and private Robert Caro. Her observational documentary tells the story of his research methods, of how he uncovered the racism inherent in Robert Moses’ approach to urban development and of the secrets and lies buried within the Johnson family that Caro’s unflagging patience and active listening uncovered in Texas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This content is from BIO, The US based Biographers International Organisation, which promotes and champions the practice of biography to writers and readers.   You can read more about BIO here: https://biographersinternational.org/   In this episode award-winning biographer Jonathan Eig talks about why it was time, after more than three decades, for a new biography of Martin Luther King that explored his flawed humanity.    Benefitting from the release of previously unavailable documents from the White House and the FBI, this is a biography of King written for the generation that came of age with Black Lives Matter, that may know little of King and his dream.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Historian Kate Fullagar tells the story of the intertwined destinies of Governor Phillip and First Nations leader Bennelong, beginning with their deaths and spooling gradually back to their first encounter.   This bold, unconventional approach allows for a wider lens and different perspective on their respective personalities and achievements, and on the events which brought them together at a time when Britain’s colonial ambitions were to shape Australia for the next century.   Understanding, misunderstanding, conflict and a remarkable journey together to Britain give this double-headed biography a compelling and sometimes poignant narrative.   Life Sentences is produced by David Roach for Two Heads Media and edited by Kirra Jordan for PipeWolf Media. We live and work on Dharawal country and pay our respects to elders past and present. Music is composed and performed by Amanda Brown.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An elegant Trotskyist, Michael Pablo grew up in Greece to become an urbane revolutionary, who made his presence felt at many of the most significant uprisings of the 20th century in an attempt to build what he called self-managed socialism.   Partnered by his dynamic and fearless wife Elli Dyovoumoti, Pablo was often in great danger, spent time in prison, and made enemies among fellow socialists. But when it came to the Algerian uprising of 1962 against the French, he rolled up his intellectual sleeves and got his hands dirty, helping the Algerians to arm themselves by setting up a gun factory. The story of this venture is worth a movie in its own right.   Clashing with Castro, supporting Solidarity in Poland, Pablo was an influential force without ever becoming a leader. He was ahead of his time in his support for fully-fledged feminism and maintained a strong circle of friends throughout his life.   Hall Greenland’s biography, The Well-Dressed Revolutionary, is an admiring portrait of a man and a time when socially progressive ideas had real momentum and it felt as if the world were tilting towards a raised consciousness on equality and human rights.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

She is part Japanese, part Haitian but trained and lives in the US. Nothing about  Naomi Osaka is conventional, but she forged her career in the mold of her idol Serena Williams- and then beat her. Along the way, she struggled with mental health and admitted that in public, carried the Japanese flag into an empty stadium at the Tokyo Olympics during Covid, and attracted Asian sponsors desperate for a role model their customers could relate to. Oh and she also became a mother.   Ben Rothenberg’s sympathetic biography takes the reader off the court into the inner circle of coaches, managers, family and fans to paint a portrait of a complex, elusive young woman who is one of the most intriguing champions on the circuit today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In George Harrison, The Reluctant Beatle, veteran rock journalist and biographer Philip Norman (author of the definitive Beatles book, Shout!) gives us an access all areas portrait of a paradoxical figure who found fame a burden but emerged from the band, to grow into a new creative phase of life that was rewarding and productive in unexpected ways.   Based on extensive interviews with those who knew Harrison intimately,  this is a biography that is not always flattering to its subject. Harrison presents as a series of contradictions, but there is no doubt that he was eclipsed and under-estimated by Lennon and McCartney in the Beatles. He is, however, credited with writing one of its greatest hits and introducing the band to Eastern music, through his interest in learning to play the sitar, thanks to his deep friendship with Ravi Shankar.   Later he enjoyed global success in his own right, as well as becoming a pioneer of pop philanthropy, producing the landmark concert for Bangladesh and had a second career as a successful independent film producer, financing his friends The Pythons Life of Brian.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.