The life of George Johnston, author of the best-selling My Brother Jack, was in many ways symbolic of Australian post-war cultural life. He was a complex character, dogged by feelings of mediocrity, betrayal and failure that he ultimately transformed though the writing of his brilliant trilogy My Brother Jack, Clean Straw for Nothing and A Cartload of Clay. In this award-winning biography, Garry Kinnane examines the process by which Johnston selected people, places and events for this creative transformation. In doing so, he reveals the reality that lay behind the glamorous outer facade of the life of Johnston and his wife, the writer Charmian Clift.

Colin Colahan was an Australian painter of outstanding ability and reputation who from the 1920s to the 1970s was remarkably productive. Colahan was one of the more brilliant pupils of the painter Max Meldrum. Identification with the unfashionable 'Meldrumites' is one explanation for Colahan's disappearance from the public gaze. The other has murkier origins in the still unsolved murder of his girlfriend, Mollie Dean, in 1930. There was nothing of substance to link Colahan to the brutal murder, but fevered public speculation cast a depressing shadow for many years and helped propel him to Europe in 1935. There he stayed for the rest of his long life. The story of Colahan's personal life is tantalising in itself—three marriages, five children, numerous lovers, beautiful houses in England and Italy, portrait painter of the rich and famous. It was an urbane life. He was a witty, charming, talented man. This intimate, engaging portrait is indeed most welcome, and will restore Colahan's life and work to its rightful place in the history of Australian art.