Brian Matthews
Brian Ernest Matthews
Well known as a raconteur, storyteller and public speaker, Brian Matthews is a hopelessly unreconstructed St Kilda supporter who has spent far too much of his life at the MCG and other sporting grounds pursuing truth and victory. He is the author of many books, including Louisa, the life of Louisa Lawson, and, more recently, As the Story Goes and the autobiography A Fine and Private Place. He had a cult following as a famously funny and satiric weekly columnist for the Australian Weekend Magazine from 1997 to 2001 and now writes a monthly column for Eureka Street. Brian's writing ranges widely over literary non-fiction, criticism, fiction, popular culture, satire and sport. He is Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Europe-Australia Institute at Victoria University and lives in the Clare Valley in South Australia with his wife, Jane Arms.
“Some years ago I was at a committee meeting where one of the group suddenly launched upon one of the other members an astounding onslaught of abuse, vilification, and loathing from which only failing breath and imminent seizure caused him to desist. It was in fact my first experience of academic debate. The chairman, visibly shaken by the vehemence of this tirade, offered the right of reply to the person attacked, who then spoke as follows: "Mr Chairman, I did not say what I said with the specific and deliberate intention of reducing my colleague to spluttering apoplexy; that this has in fact happened I can only regard as a bonus."From that meeting I took away an important recognition — the lurking Bonus Factor In Otherwise Unpromising Situations.”