Geordie Williamson

And he has written a book called Call of the Reed Warbler.

His name is Charles Massey.

He's also a highly unlikely literary figure.

But what happened with Charles was that he was a bog standard kid, grew up on the country.

He was always destined for the country.

He goes away to ANU as a young man at a moment of Vietnam and emerging ecological understanding.

He's a naturalist by inclination.

He's really drawn to the ideas being propounded in these very early courses on ecology and landscape.

And then at 22, his dad dies and he has to go back home and take over the family farm.

So he sequesters his ecological study off to one side and goes out and is a traditional Australian farmer.

And then one day he cracks and he goes back to university in midlife and does a doctorate in ecology.

And this is the book that results.

Well, I'm about to go and do a lunch with Keridren Dovey, who has just released a novel called In the Garden of the Fugitives.

It is a dark, funny, weird, wicked comedy of morals that plays out as a kind of two-hander.

A series of emails sent... Which we did discuss on the show.

Oh, sorry.

I read it as well.

People will have...

Known all about it.

But bottom line is, it's a bit like going and seeing one of those magnificent, you know, mammoth or pinter two handers where you're never quite sure who's got the upper hand, who's telling the truth.