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Roland Perry (born 1946) is a Melbourne-based author. He has written in a variety of genres covering biography, espionage, history (WW1), cricket and fiction. His nine biographies include Monash: The Outsider Who Won The War, which won the Fellowship of Australian Writers' "Melbourne University Publishing Award" in 2004, with the judges describing it as "a model of the biographer's art."; Miller’s Luck (a biography of great cricketer and war hero Keith Miller)  ; The Don (Sir Donald Bradman)  ; The Exile (Wilfred Burchett)  ; and The Fifth Man (Lord Rothschild) among others.

Career

Perry began his writing career as a journalist on the Melbourne Age from 1969 to 1973. His first editor (in the paper's business section) was Les Carlyon (later author of ‘Gallipoli’ and ‘The Great War’) under Editor-in-Chief Graham Perkin. While working on the paper, Perry gained an economics degree at Monash University (1970-1972) and studied at Melbourne University, winning the Exhibition Prize and Frederick Blackham Journalism Scholarship in the subject ‘Journalism’ in 1969. (His primary education was at Murrumbeena State School and secondary education at Scotch College, Melbourne.)

He moved to England in 1973 to further his writing career and spent five years making documentary films, notably with feature-director Tony Maylam and documentary producer, Jack Grossman. Grossman was involved with ‘Arts for Labour’ (the UK Labour Party) under Neil Kinnock in his bid to unseat Margaret Thatcher as UK Prime Minister. Grossman was commissioned to make Labour's television party political broadcasts (party commercials). He brought Perry in to help produce a controversial 10 minute party advertisement refuting Thatcher’s claim that she had primary control of all nuclear weapons on UK soil. The sensational clip suggested that the US President still maintained his ‘finger on the button’ concerning US Cruise Missiles based in the UK and aimed at the (then) Soviet Union. Thatcher was forced to defend her claims in a hostile Parliament.

While based in the UK, Perry covered three US Presidential elections as a free-lance journalist in 1976 (Jimmy Carter v Gerald Ford); 1980 (Ronald Reagan v Jimmy Carter); and 1984 (Ronald Reagan v Walter Mondale.) His outlets were The Times, London; The UK Sunday Times; The UK Daily Telegraph; The UK Sunday Telegraph; The Guardian, UK; BBC TV and radio; TV Channel 4; radio LBC: Harpers & Queen; Penthouse; Columbia University Magazine; Time Out; Campaign Magazine UK; and Computing UK. (The author has written articles for all Australia’s leading papers and magazines over a 40 year span, 1969 to 2009, including The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Sunday Age, The Melbourne Herald Sun, the Sydney Daily Telegraph, the Brisbane Courier Mail, The Adelaide Advertiser and West Australian. He has also contributed to the Heritage Magazine and Medical Observer.)

One of the most striking features he wrote in those four decades appeared in Penthouse UK in 1984. This investigative article was based on interviews by Perry (in 1981, on camera with Jack Grossman directing) inside the White House. The key interviewee, Dr Richard Beal, explained how the US Government planned for world ‘crises’ long before they happened or might happen by using advanced ‘war-gaming’ techniques. These included how a ‘crisis’ might be created, for instance, to allow the US to go to war to protect its oil interests in the Middle East. The author believed that the Reagan administration was in an over-confident mood in 1981---soon after Reagan’s inauguration. In this atmosphere, he said, its guard was down. Nobody would have secured such footage or commentary, he claimed, at any time after 1981.

In 1985, Perry returned to Australia (after 11 years based in London, and one in New York) to work as a scriptwriter with director Tim Burstall, who played a leading part in the renaissance of the Australian film industry from the late 1960s. Perry was also a writer/director on Strike Swiftly, a seven part ABC television documentary series on the Commando regiment of the Australian Army.

In 1991, Perry was commissioned by the Weekend Australian Magazine to write a feature about an Australian syndicate attempting to raise the treasure from a sunken galleon off the coast of Guam in the Pacific. He returned to Guam with a film crew to make a documentary: The Raising of a Galleon’s Ghost. Perry wrote, produced and directed the film. It was sponsored by Omega, which distributed it world-wide. The cinematographer was Rob Copping, who shot the Tim Burstall-directed Alvin Purple and Stork.

Fiction

Perry worked for three years part-time on his first book, a fictional thriller, Program for a Puppet, which was first published in the UK by W. H. Allen in May 1979 and then Crown in US in 1980. The book became an international best-seller in paperback, primarily with Hamlyn in the UK and Pocket Books in the US. Program for a Puppet was translated into several languages, including German, Spanish, Japanese and Italian. Newgate Callendar in The New York Times called it ‘altogether an exciting story...an exciting panorama.’ Author Morris West sent the publisher a review, saying it was ‘a compelling read. I found the narrative fascinating.’ Publisher's Weekly (US) said: ‘In a slick, convincing manner, Perry welds high-tech with espionage.’

In an interview on Sydney radio a decade after the publication of Program for a Puppet, Perry spoke about learning more from the negative reviews for his first fiction book than the good reviews: ‘Some were a bit cranky; some were patronising,’ he said, ‘but they were all in some way instructive. One thought the writing was “too high mileage.” Another spoke of a “staccato” style. I recall another mentioning that it was, at times, like a film script. One reviewer thought I had two good thrillers in one, which had merit. I did meld two big themes that may have been better separated. But you don’t really know what you are doing on a first fiction. I did all the heavy research, “forty ways to pick a lock,” that sort of thing.’ In a further interview on ABC TV, when talking about his first novel, the author said he kept the story moving - Freddie Forsyth style - from city to city around the world. Characterisation was minimal. The plot was strong, but being a good ‘plotter’ and researcher were the least important elements, he claimed, of distinctive writing. Perry didn’t think he had a ‘voice’---or any strong confidence in what he was doing until book number 4, which seemed to be the general rule for authors. He remarked that he was fortunate Program did so well. It allowed him to buy time to concentrate on developing a writing career.

The author’s second novel, Blood is a Stranger (published by Heinemann and Mandarin Publishing in 1988) was set in Australia's Arnhem Land and Indonesia. This covered the ‘issue’ of the misuse of uranium mining and dangers of nuclear weapons, a theme in Perry’s early writing and documentary film-making. Stephen Knight in the Sydney Morning Herald wrote: Blood is a Stranger is a skilful and thoughtful thriller…with a busy plot and some interesting, unnerving speculations about what might be going on in the world of lasers, yellowcake (uranium mining and manufacture) and Asian politics---things that most people prefer to ignore in favour of more simple and familiar puzzles.’

Roland Perry returned to fiction and a pet theme---the evils of nuclear weapons---in his third novel Faces in the Rain. Set mainly in Melbourne and Paris, he used a thriller narrative (writing for the first time in the first person) to expose the nefarious activities of the French in testing and developing nuclear weapons in the Pacific. The book was published by Mandarin in 1990.

Nonfiction

The author’s second book followed up on a factual theme in Program for a Puppet ---the way the American public was manipulated into voting for candidates by slick computer-based campaigns. Entitled Hidden Power: The Programming of the President it concentrated on the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The book explained how advertising techniques had been superceded in elections by more sophisticated methods, including marketing and computer analysis. It was published by Aurum Press in the UK and Beaufort in the US in 1984. The book, as much narrative as analysis, told how the two key campaign ‘pollsters’ steered their candidates. It was not critical of President Ronald Reagan, but was seen by the Republican campaign as hostile to him.

In the UK, the book received wide coverage. The Economist opined that it had a ‘frightening message: the pollsters with their state-of-the-art computers, which keep a finger on the pulse of the electorate, hope they can manipulate almost any election and have ambitions to control what the people’s choice can do in office.’ Oliver Pritchett in the London Sunday Telegraph thought the book’s main concept was ‘an alarming idea, and the author...plainly intends to give us the shivers.’

Communist journalist, Australian Wilfred Burchett died in Bulgaria late 1983, when Perry was still in London. Perry decided to write Burchett’s biography. William Heinemann in Australia and the UK were again the publishers, in 1988. The subject was the most controversial figure in Australia’s history since Victorian bush-ranger Ned Kelly. He polarised the nation perhaps like no other. Perry based the book on Australia’s biggest defamation trial, when Burchett in 1974 sued Jack Kane of the Democratic Labour Party for calling him a KGB agent. Thirty trial witnesses laying out Burchett’s life and career delivered the author a useful vehicle for the biography. Perry travelled to the US, UK, France and Russia for research. He interviewed key figures on both sides of the political spectrum, and all the key lawyers and barristers in the case.

The Fifth Man

For his seventh book, published in 1994, Perry set out to discover the identity of the ‘Fifth Man’ in the "Cambridge Five" Cambridge University spy ring---the most effective espionage group of the 20th Century. All members of the Ring worked for the Soviet Union’s KGB and were run by Russian Master Spy Yuri Ivanovitch Modin. To even attempt this project Perry needed considerable research funds for several trips to Europe, Russia and the US. He raised the finance in 1992 and 1993 by writing two books in ‘lighter’ fields: films and cricket. One concerned the films of Mel Gibson (Lethal Weapon). Publisher Peter Fenton at Oliver Books sent Perry on another 20-city tour of the US, then to the UK, to promote it. The other tome covered the 1993 Ashes cricket series between Australia and England, and the hero of the Test matches, spinner Shane Warne (Shane Warne: Master Spinner.) In the spring/summer of 1993 in England the author saw every match of the Ashes series, and in between took trips to Moscow, Washington DC, Paris and St Petersburg in search of the mystery espionage agent for the book The Fifth Man. He claimed to have a strong base of contacts within British intelligence, especially MI6, members of which had assisted him on detail for his first novel and information for articles on espionage.

After initial research he presented a 20,000 word evidentiary statement to Sedgwick & Jackson UK’s William Armstrong, who had published various books on espionage, notably by British journalist Chapman Pincher. Armstrong had been caught up in circumstances surrounding the MI5 agent Peter Wright, who published Spycatcher with William Heinemann (also Perry’s publisher in 1988. Through this connection, Wright became one of Perry’s interviewees for The Fifth Man). Armstrong commissioned Perry to write the book. The Fifth Man was published in 1994, during an avalanche of spy book ‘collaborations.’ Only Perry and Kim Philby’s biographer, Phillip Knightley, avoided collaborating with former KGB agents. Knightley instead edited a book The Philby Files by Genrikh Borovik. Perry made several trips to Russia for interviews with eight KGB agents, five of whom claimed they knew the true identity of the Fifth Man.

‘The collapse of the old USSR saw the rise of two types of Western espionage “experts”,’ the author told Damien Murphy of the Australia’s The Bulletin magazine, "academic historians on a feverish document hunt, who maintain the Fifth Man is fantasy because documentation apparently does not exist.; and London journalists flying into Moscow to pay superannuated KGB officers to tell them what they want to hear for a headline." Perry said he ‘slipped under the net.’ He didn’t do deals with literary or espionage agents, but instead arrived and used contacts to get interviews, or simply turned up on door steps, with an interpreter, the way any journalist would in the west. Some agents politely or impolitely rejected his overtures; others did not.

The book named Lord (Victor) Rothschild, the Third Baron, as the fifth key member of the KGB-controlled Ring. The other four were Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, and Sir Anthony Blunt, the Queen’s art curator. The media and press were split between positive and negative reaction to The Fifth Man. The Irish Times reviewer Kieran Fagan said: ‘This book by an Australian journalist is very unusual.....Few writers on espionage achieve the page-turning fluency of Roland Perry.’ The Weekend Australian reviewer Richard Hall said ‘it only takes a couple of phone calls to establish that the Rothschild operation had been pretty small beer for a long time.’ Hall did not mention who was on the end of those phone calls that informed him so much, which prompted Perry to write to the paper, saying ‘it would have been helpful if Mr. Hall had named his sources so we could compare them to those in the book...’ In contrast, Norman Abjorensen in The Sunday Canberra Times wrote: Perry makes a plausible case that the Fifth Man was...Rothschild...even from the most critical viewpoint it has to be conceded that the circumstantial evidence pointing to Rothschild is compelling.’

The magnetron, according to Perry, was just one of many weapons developments that Rothschild, the brilliant scientist with a 183 IQ passed on to the Moscow Centre this way. Perry claimed the Rothschild carefully kept his direct contact with the KGB spies to a minimum. Instead, he used middle-men, namely Guy Burgess and Blunt, to pass on any purloined espionage information.

Recent non-fiction

After this run of sports writing, the author turned again to history, writing a biography of Australian General Sir John Monash, the outstanding military commander of the Great War, 1914-1918. This proved to be his biggest challenge since the publication of The Fifth Man a decade earlier. The book - Monash: the outsider who won a war was reviewed by leading politicians (of different persuasions), including prime ministers and State Governors, Generals, military experts, historians, academics, lawyers, engineers, journalists and literary critics. Monash won the Fellowship of Australian Writers' "Melbourne University Publishing Award" in 2004, with the judges describing it as "a model of the biographer's art."

Roland Perry next chose an American spy, Michael Whitney Straight, as the subject of his 19th book, Last of the Cold War Spies, published first by the US’s Da Capo Press. Straight, the scion of a super-rich Anglo-American family, had been recruited by Anthony Blunt into the infamous Cambridge University Ring. Straight’s name had come up often in Perry’s research into The Fifth Man. He began his investigation again in Russia interviewing former KGB agents in the late 1990s. Phillip Knightley (biographer of Kim Philby), who wrote: ‘In the years before Straight died, in frank interviews with him, from government files and from confessions from former intelligence officers, Roland Perry has painstakingly produced an intriguing and illuminating account of Straight’s crucial role in the most damaging spy ring of all time.’

After covering the Western Front through the biography of Monash in WW1, Roland Perry turned to the Eastern Front for his 23rd book. It covers the dual biographies of Australian General Sir Harry Chauvel and T E Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’), which are the vehicles for his tome: The Australian Light Horse to be published in October 2009. According to his publisher, Hachette, the story will cover the Boer War and WW1, and the huge impact of the Light Horse in the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East.

Cricket books

Perry turned to his love of cricket for his book, The Don, a biography of Sir Donald Bradman published in 1995 again by Macmillan in Australia and William Armstrong at Sedgwick & Jackson in the UK. More than 50 books had appeared on Don Bradman since the 1930s, but no author had ever interviewed him. Perry secured interviews through contacts that had done business with the cricketing legend. Six months turned into a six year relationship and four books in all: The Don; Bradman’s Best (Random House, 2001); Bradman’s Best Ashes Teams (Random House, 2002); and Bradman’s Invincibles (Hachette, 2008). Perry discovered during his writing of the Bradman biography that Sir Donald had made a hobby of selecting world sides. The author asked him for his ‘best-ever’ dream team and they discussed the scores of candidates. The book, Bradman’s Best (Random House) was published simultaneously in Australia and the UK on 12 August 2001 to much fanfare. It was an instant best-seller capturing the imagination of the sporting world. The UK Observer’s Norman Harris noted in his column that the book ‘containing the 11 precious names will be guarded like gold bars.’

In 1997 Perry wrote a biography of Shane Warne: Bold Warnie, after his story on the leg-spin bowler’s dominance of the 1993 Ashes. Bold Warnie was published by Random House in 1998. Again, Warne’s brilliance on the field and controversial life off it over drug, sex, gambling and more sex, made him an attractive candidate for a biography, and to explore both sides of the Australian Superstar sporting character and story. Perry followed this with Waugh’s Way: Steve Waugh—learner, leader, legend (Random House 2000); and Captain Australia, A History of the Celebrated Captains of Australian Test Cricket (Random House, 2000).

Captain Australia covered every Australian skipper (except for Ricky Ponting) since Test cricket began. Each chapter carried a mini-biography of the 41 leaders. He began the book with the story of Charles Lawrence, whom Perry called "a founding father of Test cricket." In 1868, Lawrence took the first squad of international cricketers from Australia to England. It was a unique team, made up entirely of Aboriginal cricketers who acquitted themselves impressively. Robin Marlar, wrote in The Cricketer International: "Perry is a prolific, stylish writer...What lifted this book for me was the 24 page prologue on a fascinating character, Charles Lawrence, the immigrant from England who took on the embryonic Australian establishment and brought the first, if not quite the only team of Aboriginals to England in 1868."

Each reviewer seemed to have a chapter that stood out for them. For The Age, Melbourne ‘the most interesting’ was on the 34th captain, Ian Chappell, entitled ‘Larrikin Leader,’ which notes cultural and political connections between Chappell, Bob Hawke, the advertising guru John Singleton, 1970s "ockerism", and the promotion of WSC (World Series Cricket, sponsored by Kerry Packer.) The Herald Sun Melbourne noted: ‘There are some good stories in Captain Australia...The chapter on Greg Chappell gives wonderful insight into the genius of Sir Donald Bradman.’ Cricket Magazine Inside Edge wrote: The appeal of Captain Australia...will be the detail on captains most of us never saw such as Murdoch, Blackham, Armstrong, Woodfull and Richardson…It’s a valuable addition to our cricketing canon.’

In 2005, following the death of Keith Miller, Perry decided to write Miller’s Luck, The Life and Loves of Keith Miller, Australia’s greatest all-rounder. , commended by The (UK) Cricket Society as "the best cricket biography of the year" (2006), and short-listed by the Society’s "Book of Year" and the Cricket Writers "Book of the Year". Ron Reed in a syndicated piece for all News Corporation tabloids including the Melbourne Herald Sun wrote: ‘Miller’s Luck is an excellent biography. It’s an honest portrayal of the imperfect human being behind the heroic legend.’

Perry turned again to sport and cricket for his 20th book, The Ashes: A Celebration. It was mainly an anthology of the author’s essays on the game and included much unpublished material about some of his subjects, Bradman, Warne and Waugh. He included his top ten ‘impacts’ on The Ashes since 1877. The Melbourne Age’s Steven Carroll wrote: ‘Having written voluminously before on cricket and cricketers...his knowledge on the game is formidable...he’s an authoritative observer, not shy...and a very entertaining read.’ Kit Galer in the Melbourne Herald Sun wrote: ‘This book serves as an excellent primer for those whose interest in the game was aroused by Australia’s defeat last year .’

The author stayed in the sports genre for his next biography, that of West Australian Rolly Tasker the world champion yachtsman and international businessman. The book, Sailing to the Moon, had similar themes to Perry’s approach in Miller’s Luck. Tasker’s story, complete with exceptional sporting achievements and business attainments, was mixed with an expose of his controversial and flamboyant private life.

Reviews

Perry's works have been the subject of some criticism, including from fellow cricket writer Gideon Haigh. Haigh was critical of Perry's book Captain Australia—a book on Australia's Test cricket captains—claiming that Perry had "... a disquieting tendency to, quite casually, mangle information for no particular reason" and "...  there are assertions whose origins are, at least, somewhat elusive." Referring to Perry's biography of Bradman, he said "the book-shaped object of Roland Perry, had "access" , and used it to mainly unenlightening, and sometimes tedious, effect".

The historian David Frith said of his book Miller's Luck, about Keith Miller, "Perry's work here is anything but confidence-inspiring. He is an opportunist author, Don Bradman, Shane Warne and Steve Waugh being among his previous subjects, together with a book on Australia's captains which gave the world nothing that the painstaking Ray Robinson had not already dealt with, apart from the update".

Frith said "the book is strewn with errors that undermine confidence in the work as a whole". He pointed out that Keith Johnson the cricket administrator was not the father of Australian cricket captain Ian Johnson, that Army cricketer JWA Stephenson was not the colonel who became the Marylebone Cricket Club secretary. Frith also noted that an error when Perry wrote that Cyril Washbrook took a run after being hit on the head it was not a bye, under the laws of cricket it would be a leg bye. He also noted that George Tribe was not a leg spinner. Tribe was a left-hander and leg spinners are right-handed. Frith also noted that Wally Hammond was not dropped for the final Test of 1946–47, but that he was out of action because he had fibrositis.

Of the same book, Ramachandra Guha said the Perry had done little except reword Miller's autobiography Cricket Crossfire. He said that "conversations are invented, thoughts imputed, motives intuited – without any directions as to their source or provenance". Guha also criticised Perry for mistakenly claiming that Lahore is in North West Frontier Province and for referring to Vijay Merchant as "Vijay Singh". He also criticised Perry for claiming that Miller and his Australian Services cricket team saw Merchant as a cheat when Miller called Merchant "one of the finest sportsmen India has produced".

Noel Annan, Baron Annan, in reviewing The Fifth Man, Perry's book accusing Victor Rothschild of being the fifth spy working for the Soviet Union of the Cambridge Five, cast doubt on whether Perry had actually interviewed Rothschild's relatives or whether he had made up material in his book.

Warwick Franks reviewed Bradman's Best, which was a book that profiled Bradman's selection of his greatest all-time XI and profiles of the players. Franks said "Perry's reverential approach turns the process into Moses bringing down the tablets from Mount Sinai. To Perry, Bradman is without spot or stain so that much of his writing, as in the earlier biography, takes on the air of hagiography". Franks criticised Perry for depicting Bradman as an all-powerful influence and prescient when it came to strategic successes as a administrator and leader, but when a dubious selection such as the omission of a leading player who had angered Bradman occurred, Perry blamed Bradman's administrative colleagues. Franks also criticised the large number of factual errors in the book, such as in the profile of Don Tallon.

References

1. Fellowship of Australian Writers, 2004, FAW National Literary Awards 2004, accessed 16 July 2009
2. Perry, Roland (2006). Miller's Luck: the life and loves of Keith Miller, Australia's greatest all-rounder. Sydney: Random House. ISBN 9781741662221.
3. Perry, Roland (1995): The Don – A Biography of Sir Donald Bradman, Macmillan. ISBN 0 73290827 2
4. The Exile: Burchett, Reporter of Conflict, William Heinemann, Australia, 1988; ISBN 0 85561 106 5
5. The Fifth Man, Sedgwick & Jackson, UK, 1994
6. Time Out Magazine London, UK, 23 September 1981.
7. ‘The Crisis Machine’, Penthouse Magazine UK, Volume 19, No 6, June 1984.
8. ‘The Crisis Machine’, Penthouse Magazine UK, Volume 19 No 6, June 1984. See Perry’s articles ‘Candidate Reagan’, UK Sunday Times, 29 April 1984 and ‘The Man Who Monitored the World During a Crisis,’ Computing UK, 24 May 1984; ‘Caed Mile Demos’ by Paddy Prendiville, Sunday Tribune, Ireland 29 April 1984; ‘The Programming of the President,’ Andrew Casey, Sydney Sun-Herald, 19 August 1984; ‘Pollsters: ignore them at your peril,’ Business Review Weekly, Australia 3-9 November 1984; ‘Strategists use programs to put politicians in power,’ by Bill Johnston, The Australian, 27 November 1984. The one hour documentary produced by Grossman and Perry was ‘The Programming of the President,’ Program Film Productions, 1984.
9. Strike Swiftly, Jaypat films, ABC TV documentary series May, June 1985; See Tim Burstall’s obituary by Perry ‘The renaissance man of Australian filmmaking,’ The Age, Melbourne, 22 April 2004.
10. The Tracking of a Galleon’s Ghost, Omega, 1992.
11. Perry, Roland (1979). Programme for a Puppet. UK: W H Allen. ISBN 0 491 02197 6.; In the US entitled Program for a Puppet. Crown. 1980.
12. Newgate Callendar, New York Times, 1 September 1980.
13. Arthur Morris, Programme for a Puppet, 2nd printing paperback, Hamlyn Paperbacks, UK, 1981.
14. Publisher’s Weekly, US 18 June 1980.
15. Owen Delany interview with the author, News Overnight Program, Macquarie Network, 18 May 1988; ABC TV Australia Sunday Arts program, 20 February 1993.
16. Blood is a Stranger, William Heinemann, Australia, 1988; ISBN 085561 160 X
17. ‘From Mulga Ashtray to Mainstream,’ by Stephen Knight, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 June 1988.
18. Faces in the Rain, Mandarin Publishing, Australia, 1990; ISBN 1 86330 076 7
19. Computers Maketh the President, by Caroline Wilson, Melbourne Herald, 24 August 1984. Hidden Power, Beaufort US, 1984; The Programming of the President, Aurum Press, UK, 1984; ISBN 0 906053 78 1; Elections Sur Ordinateur, Robert Laffont & Bonnel Editions, France, 1984; ISBN 2-221-01932-6
20. The Economist 7 September 1984.
21. UK Sunday Telegraph, Oliver Pritchett, 15 July 1984.
22. The Exile: Burchett, Reporter of Conflict, William Heinemann, Australia, 1988; ISBN 0 85561 106 5
23. Lethal Weapon, Oliver Books, UK, 1993: ISBN 1-870049-79-9
24. Shane Warne, Master Spinner, Information Australia, Australia, 1993; ISBN 1 86350 149 5
25. The Fifth Man, Sedgwick & Jackson, UK, 1994
26. Spies Without Cloaks: The KGB’s Successors; Knight, Amy, Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, US, 1996.
27. Last of the Cold War Spies, p x, Da Capo Press, Second (Trade Paperback) edition, US, 2006.
28. Borovik, Genrikh; The Philby Files; Little, Brown & Co. US, 1994.
29. ‘Is This the Last Man,’ by Damien Murphy, The Bulletin Magazine, Australia; 8 November 1994.
30. ‘Victor Ludorum,’ by Kiernan Fagan, The Irish Times; 10 November 1994.
31. Richard Hall, The Weekend Australian, 14 January 1995.
32. Letter to Editor, Weekend Australian, 21 January 1995.
33. ‘Following the Moscow Line,’ by Norman Abjorensen, The Sunday Times Canberra, 22 January 1995.
34. ‘Rothschild is named as Fifth Man,’ by Gillian Harris, the Scotsman, 15 October 1994.
35. Fellowship of Australian Writers, 2004, FAW National Literary Awards 2004, accessed 16 July 2009
36. Last of the Cold War Spies, Da Capo Press, US, 2005; ISBN 978-0-306-81428-0
37. Last of the Cold War Spies, p ix-x, Da Capo Press, Second (Trade Paperback) edition, US, 2006.
38. Last of the Cold War Spies, First (Hardcover) edition US, 2005.
39. http://www.hha.com.au/books/9780733622724.html Retrieved 13 July 2009.
40. Norman Harris, London Observer, 7 July 2001; Bradman’s Best, Random House, Australia, 2001; ISBN 0091840511; Bradman’s Best Ashes Teams, Random House, Australia, 2002: ISBN 1 74051 125 5
41. Bold Warnie, Random House Australia, 1999, ISBN 0 091 84001 5; Waugh’s Way: Steve Waugh: Learner, Leader, Legend, Random House, Australia 2000; ISBN 1 74051 000 3; Captain Australia, A History of the Celebrated Captains of Australian Test Cricket, Random House, Australia, 2000; ISBN 1 74051 001 1
42. Robin Marlar, The Cricketer International, June 2001.
43. The Melbourne Age, 24 December 2000.
44. Melbourne Herald Sun, 5 December 2000.
45. Inside Edge Magazine, December 2000.
46. Perry, Roland (2006). Miller's Luck: the life and loves of Keith Miller, Australia's greatest all-rounder. Sydney: Random House. ISBN 9781741662221.
47. ‘Prince Charming,’ by Ron Reid, Herald Sun, 5 August 2005.
48. Steven Carroll, The Melbourne Age, 29 July 2006.
49. ‘The glory of flannelled fools,’ by Kit Galer, Melbourne Herald Sun, 19 August 2006.
50. Sailing to the Moon, Pennon, Australia, 2008; ISBN 9781920997076
51. Haigh, Gideon (2004). "No Ball". Game for anything: Writings on Cricket. Melbourne: Black Inc. ISBN 1 86395 309 4.
52. Haigh, Gideon (2008-11-22). "The First Word". Cricinfo. Retrieved 2009-01-08.
53. ^ Frith, David. "Fault lines in a hero's tale". Cricinfo. Retrieved 2009-01-08.
54. ^ Guha, Ramachandra (2005). "Big hitter, Huge Heart". The Monthly: 60–62. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
55. "The Fifth Man". New York Review of Books. 1995-03-23. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |Accessdate= ignored (|accessdate= suggested) (help)
56. ^ Franks, Warwick (December 2002). "Bradman's Best". The Australian Public Intellectual Network. Retrieved 2009-01-08.

• 1946 births
• Living people
• Australian non-fiction writers
• Cricket historians and writers
• Writers from Victoria (Australia)
• Writers from Melbourne