Chuck Berry has died age 90, rightly remembered as the legend who shaped rock and roll. But his misdeeds can’t be ignored in the rush to glorify an icon.
Public health pioneer Basil Hetzel died on February 4 2017. Among other career highlights, he identified the most common cause of preventable brain damage: dietary iodine deficiency.
Shirley Hazzard, who passed away this week, was one of the great prose stylists of the last 50 years. A deeply intellectual autodidact, she championed the public duty of writers and the pleasure of reading.
The Australian writer Georgia Blain, who died last week, wrote extraordinary portraits of family relationships, in luminous prose, with devastating insight. And when she became ill, she wrote about her cancer.
Peter Corrigan, one of Australia’s most influential architects, died last week. A man of endless enthusiasm and curiosity, he shaped Melbourne’s cityscape and influenced a generation of architects.
Richard Neville was a man of his times: a smart-alec student in the 60s; a drug-smoking hippie on trial in the 70s; to a family man, writer and public speaker in the 80s and 90s.
Editing a movie beside the late, great Paul Cox was like attending ‘a one on one’ film school. The growling auteur was a brilliantly stubborn man, who treated film with reverence and wore his heart on his sleeve.
Reg Grundy, who has died at 92, was an Australian TV mogul who never owned a TV station. He did for TV content what Ford did for car production - marketing a product of proven appeal to people around the world.
One of Victoria Wood’s recurring themes was television, something that until recently, held the nation together. As such, she is the consummate English comic.
Despite Prince’s many transformations – musically and visually – he extended his signature energy over 39 albums. His broad sonic church attracted fans from every walk of life.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne