Jacqueline Kent

with life when you are not in control of any of it much and how you actually go about gaining that control for yourself and the consequences for you and for the people that you love.

Oh, thank you very much, Cassie and Kate.

That was terrific.

She was actually the longest serving, if that's the word I want, book editor in Australia.

She worked at Angus and Robertson's from 1937 to 1973.

And she was the one who absolutely

absolutely had in the palm of her hand the editorial department.

She was a bit scary, I think.

I knew her when she was older.

But she was a friend of people, authors, right, from, well, from Miles Franklin, really, to Tim Winton.

She was the bridge connecting them both.

And she was therefore very important as a tastemaker, if you like.

She sort of taught people what was good and what wasn't, as well as sort of, you know, eliminating split infinitives and doing all that stuff.

basically because we'd been married about three and a half months and he had a heart attack and died.

I mean, that was basically it.

But it was, I know the subtitle of the book is A Year With Kenneth Cook and I wanted to write about it because it was such an amazing year.

It really was.

It was kind of a volcanic year.

eruption into my life.

And in fact, it was a long time ago now.