Ryan Cropp: Donald Horne. A Life in the Lucky Country

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Ryan Cropp shares with Gabriella the multiplicity of choices he made while writing Donald Horne. A Life in the Lucky Country, the biography of Donald Horne, a prominent and outspoken Australian journalist, writer, public intellectual and social critic.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: 

• Why Ryan Cropp felt compelled to write a biography of Donald Horne.


• The meaning behind the second part of the book’s title: A Life in the Lucky Country. 


• Why Ryan opens the biography with a close up view of Horne sitting on a Sydney bus looking out the window while he was being filmed for a current affairs program.


• Ryan’s exhaustive research strategy and how he narrowed the biographical scope to ensure he didn’t write a tome.


• How Ryan incorporated information from Horne’s three autobiographies into the narrative, yet avoided serving as Horne’s ventriloquist given that memoirists are unreliable narrators of their own life.


• How Ryan made Myfanwy, Horne’s wife and literary partner, a central character 


• How Ryan represented Myfanwy’s point of view given that the wives of prominent men are often invisible in the biographies of their husbands. 


• How Ryan achieved a fine balance between portraying Horne’s public, private and interior lives. 


• The literary devices Ryan employed to craft an enthralling narrative.


•  Ryan’s beliefs about the role of a biographer.

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