He’s the fellow for Braddon biography
Russell
Braddon’s wartime memoir sold two million copies, Britain’s Daily
Express made him its Man of the Year, his show business act topped
the bill at the London Palladium – and now his biography is being
written by a UniSA academic.
On the way to telling that life story, UniSA senior lecturer in creative writing Dr Nigel Starck has had some success of his own. He has been granted a Manning Clark Fellowship, a prestigious award for history research.
The fellowship offered a six-week residency at Manning Clark House in Canberra, with sustained access to the National Library, the National Film and Sound Archive, and the Australian War Memorial. It has been funded by the Copyright Agency, a major sponsor of the House.
The setting alone offered inspiration for Braddon’s biography.
"I’ve been writing the manuscript in Manning Clark’s old study, at the desk where he wrote the definitive history of Australia," Dr Starck said.
The narrative begins with Russell Braddon’s hand-to-hand combat in the Malayan campaign; shifts to an account of idyllic childhood adventures in the bush and on the beaches of Sydney; confronts the horrors of the Burma Railway; and appraises his 30 books and extensive broadcasting.
Dr Starck said that despite the phenomenal sales of Braddon’s memoir The Naked Island, and his popular biographies of the opera singer Joan Sutherland and the Resistance heroine Nancy Wake, he has remained an enigmatic, under-valued figure in Australia’s literary canon. Since his death in 1995 however, relatives and former colleagues have gradually built the Braddon Collection, held in the National Library.
"The discoveries I’ve made there offer proof that Russ Braddon’s own story is a riveting one," said Dr Starck. "Life imitates art, again."