The making of The Dancer Upstairs The location: a flat off Ladbroke Grove in London. The time: 2am, early November, 1995. I’m lying across the bed, despondent, broke and just back from India where I spent my last penny taking the girlfriend to whom I’d dedicated The [...]

Kemp & Potter for Lali Johne Early in 1999 I flew from London to Sydney and then, on Valentine’s Day, to Tasmania. I’d just finished writing a long biography, seven years work on one man, the writer and traveller, Bruce Chatwin, and I was burnt out. One [...]

Lost in France by Nicholas Shakespeare One March day in 1937, “feeling very ill and alone in the world”, my aunt Priscilla caught the Paris train from London’s Victoria Station with £5 in her pocket. She was 20, unmarried and pregnant, and had decided to go to [...]

Dobbing on Dr Raad by Nicholas Shakespeare Dr Maurice Raad was a large, chubby South African, 53-years old, with a prominent mole on his right cheek. He appeared harassed on his first morning. As he bustled about the room, opening and closing cupboards, he chatted about Tasmania [...]

Tiger hunting by Nicholas Shakespeare One wet night in March 1982, Hans Naarding was surveying snipe in north-west Tasmania when he came face to face with a Tasmanian tiger – a creature that he believed to be extinct. Naarding is a bushman with many years of experience [...]

Tahiti by Nicholas Shakespeare I know, now, what I’m going to do when I become so wealthy that I don’t know what to do. I’m going to charter the Ti’a Moana for a week’s “yachting” in Tahiti and invite along my family and friends. It is difficult [...]