Speaker Don Watson, Writer, Author
Topic ‘The Passion of Private White’
Date/Time Wed 3 May 12.30 for 12.50 – 2.00pm
Venue No35 Restaurant Sofitel Hotel on Collins also Online via Zoom
Price $53 (2 course lunch @ No35) / $10 Zoom only online access
Register https://events.humanitix.com/rotary-melbourne-3may
Don Watson was educated in a country high school and at La Trobe and Monash universities. After completing a Ph.D in 1976 he taught history and politics before leaving academia and becoming a freelance writer. In the 1980s he wrote satire for the stage and television, principally for the actor Max Gillies, and speeches for the Victorian Premier John Cain. In 1992 he became Prime Minister Paul Keating’s speechwriter and adviser and remained in the role until the government’s defeat in 1996.
Over the past forty years Watson's articles, essays and reviews on politics, history and culture have appeared in most major Australian journals and newspapers. His books include the acclaimed best-sellers, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart (2002), Death Sentence (2003) and Watson’s Dictionary of Weasel Words (2004); American Journeys (2008), Bendable Learnings (2010), The Bush (2014), Worst Words (2015) and A Single Tree (2016). He wrote Enemy Within, a Quarterly Essay on the 2016 US Presidential Election. A collection of his essays, There It Is
Again, was published in 2017, and another collection, Watsonia, in 2021. He has twice won The Age Book of the Year, in addition to the National Biography Award, the Courier-Mail Book of the Year, the Alfred Deakin Essay Prize, the Australian Literary Studies Association Book of the Year, a Walkley Award, the New South Wales Premier’s Award, the Queensland Literary Award, and the Independent Booksellers Book of the Year (twice). In 2011 Don Watson was awarded the Phillip Hodgins Medal for Australian Literature.
His film writing includes The Man Who Sued God (starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis) and Passion (Barbara Hershey and Richard Roxburgh).
Don Watson is a regular writer for The Monthly.
Of The Passion of Private White, Tom Griffiths wrote in the Australian Book Review: ‘No publisher or literary agent could have dreamt up or commissioned this remarkable book. It is wholly unexpected and original.’
Private White is better known in our Club as Neville White our partner in the remote homeland Donydji.
