Treason on the Gleewaves



Last night Judith Keene's Treason on the Airwaves was launched at Gleebooks. Judith, introduced by Morgan Smith as a good friend and customer of Gleebooks, is a friend of ours who went through the years of parenting adolescents at the same time as us. it was lovely to see her, all nervous and hostessy, growing increasingly relieved as it became clear that there were more than enough people to fill the available seats. It wasn't the usual crowd for a Gleebooks event -- fewer silver heads, more people of scholarly bearing -- but there was the usual good cheer.

Stephen Garton, described by Judith as her boss 'if we have bosses', introduced the evening. He had appeared as an honoured son-in-law in the Donald and Myfanwy Hall memoir I read recently, so his being there in the charming and elegant flesh gave the event an uncanny Inkheart -ish feel. Then Richard Walsh spoke. He clearly loved the book, which made me wonder why he hadn't published it, instead leaving it to a US academic publisher. That question was tactfully avoided and he did a fabulous job of selling the book to us in the audience. The subtitle – Three Allied Broadcasters on Axis Radio during World War II – makes the subject clear enough. What it doesn't tell is the fascinating variation Richard outlined for us in teh way these three very different 'traitors' were treated by their home countries after the war: the evidently very unpleasant Englishman was executed in keeping with the English government's love of harsh tradition; the Nisei woman had to find a public defender to represent her in a court case, which was later revealed to have been corrupt in a number of ways (yes, George Bush didn't invent that sort of thing); the Australian was represented by the very best criminal lawyers (one of whom had represented 'the Oz boys', Richard commented) and though a preliminary hearing found he had a case to answer, the case fell between jurisdictions – the Commonwealth government couldn't prosecute and the NSW state government reused to do what it saw as the Commonwealth's dirty work (so that too is not a recent invention) – and the Australian was the only one of the three to escape post-War vindictiveness.

We bought a copy and I'll certainly read it.

In thanking Richard Walsh for launching the book, Judith told us that he had spent some time copy editing the manuscript she had submitted to him, and said we could expect the prose in the Australian section to be noticeably crisper than the rest; she also said that he had commented that the book was 'dreadfully edited' – that Gray of Gray's Elegy was spelled as if he was an Australian colour. Can this be a case where a publisher was overruled by the marketing division ('Sorry, Richard, traitors just don't sell ')?

As I was leaving, someone was introducing Judith to a cheerful man in early middle age, the grandson of the Australian traitor.

Posted: Fri - April 24, 2009 at 04:07 PM           |

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