News & Blog by Stephen Dando-Collins
Read the latest news and bulletins, essays, features, opinions from our bestselling authors. Find out what's being said, debated, and discussed in the world of books and ideas.
Spam, hackers, internet fraud, identity theft. Our parents and grandparents never had these problems when they simply posted letters. Still, technology addicts that we are, we accept these hassles in return for instant transmission of data and information access. But there are even worse scenarios. A natural disaster, terrorism or war could shut down our power grid, depriving us of power for industry,...
They say an army marches on its stomach. As I write in my latest book, Crack Hardy, for over a decade after the end of World war One Australia was repaying Britain more than £20 million that the UK Government charged the Australian Government to supply our diggers while they were overseas. Those supplies were cruelly inadequate, and contributed to tens of thousands of unnecessary casualties. On...
Are we suffering from a national speech impediment?
by Stephen Dando-Collins on 27 April 2011
“My may wen to a pardy, sank thirdeen boddles, because he reckons drinking’s a spor, and pass dow,” the young Aussie said. And he was sober. This blog isn’t about binge drinking. It’s about another insidious habit. I didn’t need a translator to understand my fellow Aussie. Not only did I know what he was saying, (mate; went; party; thirteen bottles; sport; passed out), I sometimes hear myself lapsing...
April 25, Anzac Day, is particularly poignant for me because Random House have just published my latest book, ‘Crack Hardy,’ which celebrates the lives, loves, and losses of the Searle brothers, my great-uncles, during World War One. Over recent decades, Anzac Day has grown bigger, even though the numbers of veterans grow smaller. Or is it that the media has focused on it more than before? Anzac...
My latest book, Crack Hardy, shouldn’t have been written. I was supposed to be dead. Even after defying doctors’ predictions and living, and becoming a successful author, I resisted writing Crack Hardy for twenty years. You see, in 1981, I came down with viral meningitis. Worse, I had an adverse reaction to the drug I was treated with. I was in a coma, for weeks. Funeral arrangements were made. ...
