Watson, Don 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born 1949, in Warragul, Victoria, Australia. Education: Degrees from LaTrobe and Monash Universities, Australia; Melbourne University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Melbourne, Australia. Office— The Whitlam Institute, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, South DC, New South Wales 1797, Australia.

CAREER:

Professor of history, screenwriter, playwright, author, and journalist. Former speechwriter for John Cain, and for Prime Minister Paul Keating, 1992-96. Writer of Young Lions Network Nine drama series; regular contributor, The Gillies Report, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABCTV), 1984-86. Contributor of drama documentaries to British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Radio, 1988. Member, the Whitlam Institute, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Hugh Williamson Fellow, University of Melbourne; nonfiction prize and book of the year award, The Age, National Biography Award, Colin Roderick Award, People's Choice Award, Australian Women's Weekly, and book of the year award, Australian Booksellers' Association, all for Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM.

WRITINGS:

Brian Fitzpatrick: A Radical Life, Hale & Iremonger (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1979.

Caledonia Australis: Scottish Highlanders on the Australian Frontier, Collins (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1984.

Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America, Black Inc. (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 2001.

Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM, Alfred A. Knopf Australia (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 2002.

Death Sentence, Random House (New York, NY), 2004.

Also author of The Story of Australia.

SCREENPLAYS

The Man Who Sued God, produced in Australia, 2001. (With Peter Duncan) Passion, produced in Australia.

Coauthor of theatrical productions, including Squirts, A Night with the Right, A Night of National Reconciliation, The Gillies Summit, and Manning Clark's History of Australia: The Musical. Contributor to numerous periodicals in Australia, including Meanjin, Overland, Arena, National Times, Australian Society, Sunday Age, and HQ Magazine.

SIDELIGHTS:

"Combining a love for the classics, a gift for satire and a strong sense of history, Don Watson is probably Australia's greatest political writer," noted Andrew Leigh in the Australian Journal of Political Science. Trained as a historian, Watson has crafted a distinguished career in Australia as an author, a speechwriter for national politicians, a screenwriter, a public speaker, and an author of award-winning books. Watson's work for stage and screen accents his comic views of human nature, but he is also a deeply devoted political observer, keenly interested in Australia's national conscience and international standing. At home in Australia and abroad, Watson is best known for his book Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM, an unconventional political biography based on Watson's years of service to Keating as a speechwriter.

Although disillusioned with national politics at the outset of 1992, Watson agreed to be Paul Keating's speechwriter after a meeting with the prime minister. Watson worked closely with Keating throughout Keating's term in office, from 1992 until 1996, keeping a personal diary during the entire period. When Keating left office, Watson returned to a busy life in the private sector—his film The Man Who Sued God is a popular comedy film in Australia, and he has worked on other plays and screenplays as well. When Watson decided to write a biography of Keating, he based some of it upon his diaries, adding a personal, almost memoirist touch, to the work. It is this dual perspective that animates Recollections of a Bleeding Heart and gives the book its authenticity as an insider's view of the political process.

Recollections of a Bleeding Heart was a best-seller in Australia and was widely and favorably reviewed. "For those wanting to understand the temperament of a prime minister's office, how policy is made, how speeches are drafted, how Parliament House looks, feels and operates, this is a valuable book," stated Troy Bramston in the Australian Journal of Politics and History. Bramston added: "This is truly one of the great works of Australian political writing." In Meanjin, Guy Rundle also characterized the book as "a classic of political writing" that "turns its attention to the details and personalities, the textures and surfaces, the silences and absences of day-to-day political life. Really it is several books in one, and the points at which their lines of thought intersect frame the strongest passages." Rundle added: "Like Cervantes or Rabelais, the book is not afraid to wander slightly off, to whack someone across the back of the head, or make a point that stands for all politics at all times." In his piece for the Australian Journal of Political Science, Leigh noted that Recollections of a Bleeding Heart "certainly serves history—producing a richer, more complex picture of Keating than any previous biography has provided."

In a Times Literary Supplement review of Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, Jack Waterford observed that the work has a broader application than merely a reflection on Australian politics. "There is much about this memoir-cum-diary which would strike a chord with observers of the media-minded politician anywhere," the critic wrote. "A British or an American practitioner would find the stuff of this book very familiar, and think few had described things so well in their own ponds."

More recently Watson has penned a book on the use and abuse of language in modern public life. Death Sentence takes to task the ongoing decay of communication techniques, particularly noticeable in political speeches, television commentary, and corporate communiqués. While Watson draws his examples from Australian sources, his book serves a more universal purpose, to alert the public to the very real possibility of mass manipulation in a manner reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984. In a Time Pacific review of Death Sentence, Elizabeth Feizkhah wrote: "Most people would agree with Watson that official prose is too often flabby and formulaic. When he calls for more clarity and vigor, one can only say amen."

Watson has held a Hugh Williamson fellowship at the University of Melbourne and is a member of the Whitlam Institute in New South Wales.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Age, March 15, 2003, Jason Steger, "Peter Rose, Don Watson Share Biography Prize."

Australian Book Review, February, 2002, John Rickard, "The Howard Syndrome," pp. 9-10.

Australian Journal of Political Science, November, 2002, Andrew Leigh, review of Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM, p. 577.

Australian Journal of Politics and History, March, 2003, Troy Bramston, review of Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, p. 134.

Bulletin with Newsweek (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), October 30, 2001, Susie Eisenhuth, review of The Man Who Sued God, p. 91; April 16, 2002, Maxine McKew, "Don Watson," p. 42.

Journal of Australian Studies, March, 2002, Martin Leet, review of Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, p. 174; September, 2002, Martin Leet, review of Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, p. 167.

Meanjin, March, 2003, Guy Rundle, "Labor's Love Lost," p. 79.

Quadrant, July-August, 2002, Frank Devine, "Keating's Recalcitrant Chooks," p. 56; John Mc- Donnell, "More Art Than Heart," p. 107.

Spectator, May 25, 2002, Luke Slattery, "Cultural Binge," p. 20.

Time International, November 5, 2001, Michael Fitzgerald, "Trial by Film," p. 94.

Times Literary Supplement, April 12, 1985, Neal Ascherson, "The White Man of Gippsland," p. 402; August 23, 2002, Jack Waterford, "Frogs Hit by Tidal Wave in Big Pond," p. 28.

Variety, November 5, 1002, David Stratton, review of The Man Who Sued God, p. 24.

ONLINE

Big Book Club,http://www.bigbookclub.plain.net.au/ (April 24, 2004), review of Death Sentence.

Saxton Speakers Bureau, http://www.saxton.com/ (April 24, 2004), profile of Watson.

Time Pacific, http://www.time.com/time/pacific/ magazine/ (November 17, 2003), Elizabeth Feizkhah, "Federation of Dunces."

Whitlam Institute,http://www.whitlam.org/people/ (April 24, 2004), "Don Watson."