The Bravest Scout at Gallipoli is a fascinating biographical investigation into the life of Harry Freame - a half Australian, half Japanese military Scout who defied the odds at the front in some of the most vicious fighting of World War One. Some believe he deserved the VC for his bravery but was denied because of being partly Asian.

After the war Harry faces a new challenge: becoming a soldier settler and orchardist. This proves to be harder than war, while his family life is messy and puzzling. Much later, at an age when many would be contemplating retirement, he is recruited into Australian intelligence, but totally unprepared for the role. His cause of death is disputed and he is denied a military headstone.

When he discovers this final injustice, author Ryan Butta becomes indignant and goes beyond the role of biographer to intervene on behalf of Harry and those like him who never got the acknowledgement they deserved.

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To mark the sesquicentenary of Jane Austen’s birth, this episode is an edited version of an event for Sydney Writers Festival.

Speakers are scholar of English literature Professor William Christie, bestselling author Jane Caro and First Nations author Larissa Behrendt.

Each of them celebrates different facets of their admiration for Jane Austen in terms of her characters, and her social commentary on class, entitlement, her love of nature, and the dynamics of family.

To learn more about Jane Austen I recommend Paula Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen - a life in small things

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In 2024 a story appeared in the Toronto Star by Deborah Dundas that set the world of biography on fire. At the centre of it was Alice Munro’s biographer Robert Thacker, who has devoted thirty years of his life as an academic to a close archival study of Alice Munro’s work.

It was revealed that Thacker had known for two decades that Alice’s daughter Andrea had been sexually molested by her stepfather Gerald Fremlin. When Andrea approached Thacker to ask him to make revisions to the manuscript of his book, in the light of this information, it was just at the point when the manuscript was complete and about to be printed, and he declined. He declined again when a revised edition of the book appeared several years later. He has always maintained that as an archival scholar, he had no interest in personal family dynamics and in the psychological aspects of Alice’s oeuvre.

Gerald Fremlin pled guilt to a charge of indecent assault and served a suspended sentence with two years probation. Alice Munro chose to remain with Fremlin rather than support her daughter.

In this episode Caroline Baum talks to Robert Thacker and explores the uncomfortable moral terrain of a biographer when presented with explosive material that they feel is beyond the scope of their particular focus and asks where does the biographer’s responsibility lies.

To read an in-depth account of Andrea Skinner’s experience and its repercussions for her, for Alice Munro and for Munro’s reading public, go to the excellent piece by New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/30/alice-munros-passive-voice

There is also an essay by Anne Enright in her latest anthology Attention, on the Munro affair.

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