Thomas Wentworth Wills is an Australian Icarus. Having grown up among the Djabwurring people in western Victoria, he was sent to the Rugby school in England. Returning in 1856, he promptly revolutionised colonial cricket and opened the door for the evolution of the indigenous game we know as Australian football. In 1866, he coached the Aboriginal team which later became the first Australian cricket team to tour England, despite having suffered in the war being fought at the country's frontiers between white settlers and the land's Aboriginal inhabitants. Tom Wills died a neglected and forgotten figure. His life is an Australian tragedy, but it bequeathed to the nation a unique and hopeful legacy. A wonderful novel - tragic story of genius and loss, of a man who, leaping at the sun, fell down in a dazzle of healing light. - Brian Matthews The Footy field: ground of coexistence; common ground; sacred turf. It is the one piece of Australian earth where equality rules and the game is played fair. It's footy. No-one barracks for the extinguishment of this game. Like a stab pass to a leading full-forward, Flanagan shows us the way to our goal. - Patrick Dodson
Autobiography of a journalist with Irish convict heritage. Flanagan, the fourth of six children, grew up in Tasmania, an island home with a dramatic history. Over 25 years he travelled through Australia and overseas meeting characters who helped him gain a better understanding of his past. Explores themes of finding home and belonging. Author lives in Melbourne with his family and writes for the 'Age' newspaper. He has written seven books including 'Going Away' and 'The Call'.
Arch Flanagan, 91, is a retired school teacher. In 1943, as a sergeant in the Australian Army, he was forced to labor on the infamous Burma Railway upon which it is said one man died for every sleeper laid. In the 50 years since, Arch has written four separate pieces reflecting on the experience, two short stories, a memoir and an obituary for his commanding officer, Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop. Martin Flanagan is a poet, writer and a journalist and is the fourth of Arch's six children.
Marvel Studios has provided some of the biggest worldwide cinematic hits of the last eight years, from Iron Man (2008) to the record-breaking The Avengers (2012), and beyond. Having announced plans to extend its production of connected texts in cinema, network and online television until at least 2028, the new aesthetic patterns brought about by Marvel's 'shared' media universe demand analysis and understanding. The Marvel Studios Phenomenon evaluates the studio's identity, as well as its status within the structures of parent Disney. In a new set of readings of key texts such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the thematics of superhero fiction and the role of fandom are considered. The authors identify milestones from Marvel's complex and controversial business history, allowing us to appraise its industrial status: from a comic publisher keen to exploit its intellectual property, to an independent producer, to successful subsidiary of a vast entertainment empire.
In 1966, at the age of 10, Martin Flanagan was sent to a Catholic boarding school in north-west Tasmania. Of the 12 priests on the staff, three have since gone to prison for sexual crimes committed against boys in their care. In 2018 and 2019, a series of disclosures about the school appeared on the ABC Tasmania website. Then came the Pell case. What followed was a frenzy of opinions, none of which represented Flanagan’s view. The Empty Honour Board is part memoir, a reflection on truth and memory, and what is lost in rushing to judgement. Flanagan’s school abounds in memorable characters. There’s a kid who escapes and gets as far as Surfers Paradise, and two boys who hold a competition during evening chapel to see who can confess more times. A wild boy receives a ‘Bradmanesque’ 234 strokes of the cane in one year. It is a lonely and, at times, scary existence – as while the boys are victims of violence, they are also perpetrators. Drawn to neither the school nor its religion, Flanagan discovers himself through sport, later becoming known as one of Australia’s most creative sportswriters. But his boarding days linger. In his first three years at the school, he’d faced a series of adult moral challenges. Not being an adult, he had failed – in his own estimation. This becomes of great consequence in his 20s when his wife is about to have their first child. A major reckoning with his past, however, leaves him with his ambition as a writer. A prison diary, a story of brotherly love, a journey of redemption, Flanagan’s book goes inside an experience many have had, but few have talked about.
What happens when you put together the AFL’s best-loved player and the game’s best-loved writer? Matthew Richardson, known as Richo, retired in 2009 as the most popular player in the AFL. Why was that? The careers of other great players like Nathan Buckley and Michael Voss amount to a sort of sporting perfection. Richo's career didn't. He was fallible. His kicking was flawed and he had an inability to hide his feelings on the ground but in other respects he was extraordinarily gifted. He was one of the best marks in the competition and it is said he could have run for Australia. His father, Alan "Bull" Richardson, played in Richmond's 1967 premiership team, a pivotal result in the history of the club. On his mother's side, he is descended from a black American sailor who arrived in Sydney in 1840. The average AFL career lasts three years. Richo's lasted 17 seasons. In that time, the general public got to appreciate his great bravery and his passion for both the game and his club. They also learned that, off the field, he was a humble, polite man who was always last on to the team bus because he was signing autographs. "Richo", the book, is essentially an account of the last two years of his football life with flashbacks that trace the outline of his long career. In the process, the author, Martin Flanagan, discovers a man who is worldly and much-travelled, who has a deep love of music and who thinks and uses words in a novel way. Richo is an Australian original. The book climaxes with the 2008 season when Richo, in what was seen as a prelude to his delisting, was taken from the key forward position he had dominated for nearly two decades and put on a wing. At age 33, he responded by almost winning the Brownlow medal.
Pocket-book collection of brief stories about family life. They originally appeared over a three year period in a column in the Melbourne `Age'. The author recently published his first novel `Going Away', and is a part-time journalist with the `Age'.
Martin Flanagan has been writing about Australian football for 25 years. The Last Quarter brings together three of his books that sum up that period. In 1970 he re-created the grand final of that year, said to be the best of the 20th century, by talking to the players, coaches and umpire. Southern Sky, Western Oval, written in 1993, portrays the events of a season set against the backdrop of a club, Footscray (now the Western Bulldogs), fighting to survive. The Game In Time of War, which starts with the first game after 9/11 and ends with the first game after the invasion of Iraq, describes an unnerving period in Australian history through the eyes of a man who distracts himself by watching football. The collection ends with an essay about the controversy that marked the AFL's 150th year and Flanagan's part in it, titled: Tom Wills: Confessions of a Ghost Writer.
There's no one I trust more with my club's yarn than Martin Flanagan' - Bob Murphy The Western Bulldogs' 2016 premiership came from nowhere - they were the club with no luck, no stars, no right to win, no culture of success. They were the rank underdogs and they swept to victory on an unprecedented tide of goodwill that washed over the nation. Only Martin Flanagan could bring to life this particular miracle. The club's two guiding spirits - captain Bob Murphy and coach Luke Beveridge - welcomed him in, Beveridge making available his match diaries, pre-match notes and video highlights. Flanagan interviewed every player, watched every match, talked with the trainers, the women in the football department, the fans who never miss a training session, the cheer squad. What Flanagan shows is that the Bulldogs found a new way to play partly because they found a new way to be a team - a new way to support each other, even a new way to be. A Wink from the Universe takes us into the heart of the community Luke Beveridge and Bob Murphy dreamt into being with the support of the Bulldog people around them. This is a classic of sports writing - a book for fans of the club, and of the game, but also a book for anyone who wants to know how a group of people can will a miracle to happen.
Martin Flanagan, journalist at the Age, has often written of the great Wonders of Australian Sport, his love of the AFL, of the importance of Aboriginal players in the highest echelons of Australian sport. A few years ago he threw himself at the mysterious and distressed figure of Tom Wills - our early Colonial cricket celebrity, who put together the Aboriginal Cricket Team set for Great Britain in 1868 - and helped write the original Code for Australian Rules. A hero for several original clubs - Melbourne, Collingwood and Richmond for example. Yet things fall apart, as things have often done for our sporting stars... So Flanagan went deeper: "I dared myself to actually picture Tom Wills in the various situations I knew him to have been in during his life and backed my fancy. It was like entering a creative delirium. Pictures appeared before me which I wrote down in scenes. If I do the same thing in ten years' time, I may come up with a different story but I doubt that will happen. I doubt the energy that accompanied the writing of this treatment will ever return." And so we have his TOM WILLS PICTURE SHOW, shedding light on a most complex character...
In the early 1900s, the Olympic Games track and field throwing events were dominated by a group of Irish-born weight throwers representing the United States. Of immense size and with a larger-than-life presence, these athletes came to be known as the “Irish Whales.” In The Irish Whales: Olympians of Old New York, Kevin Martin shares the untold story of these Irish American athletes who competed with unparalleled distinction for the United States. James Mitchell, John Flanagan, Martin Sheridan, Pat McDonald, Paddy Ryan, and Con Walsh won a total of eighteen medals in the Olympic Games between 1900 and 1924 and completely dominated the world stage in their chosen athletic disciplines. They were lionized in the American and Irish press and became folk heroes among Irish-American immigrant communities. Almost all of these men were further distinguished by their membership in the fabled Irish American Athletic Club of New York and careers with the New York Police Department. The story of the Irish Whales is the very embodiment of the American Dream and exemplifies the triumph of many Irish emigrants in the New World. Featuring a wonderful collection of original photographs, The Irish Whales tells the dramatic stories of these international athletes and their extraordinary sporting successes.
Brian Flanagan, grandson of Irish immigrants, has just landed a job with a leading bank in New York City. Like so many others, he hopes to make his family proud while chasing the American dream. Brian is aware of his family's ties to the Irish Republican movement and to organized crime in the city. He is determined to write a new chapter in the family history.Just as Brian believes he can see a brighter future, his family's past reaches out and pulls him into a world of secrets and violence. He is forced to risk his career, his marriage and even his own life in order to do the right thing.A Village Voice tells the story of three generations of the Flanagan family. From their early involvement in the struggle for Irish independence to their struggle in order to survive and make a new life in America.
A portrait of Michael Long, the man who changed the Australian game. In 1995, Aboriginal footballer Michael Long gave the AFL its ‘Mandela moment’. He quietly revolutionised Australian sport by refusing to let a racial insult pass during the Anzac Day match between Essendon and Collingwood. When the overwhelmingly white football public backed a black man against a white institution (the AFL), the culture of the game flipped and the AFL became a leader in Australian race relations. A decade later, he again impacted on the nation when he set out to walk from Melbourne to Canberra to confront the Howard government over Aboriginal issues. This is a portrait of a shy black kid from Darwin who became one of the most notable figures in the history of Australian sport, of a footballer who tore apart the 1993 grand final within seven minutes of the start, of a man known as a joker who is a serious social and political thinker. It is also the story of a white sportswriter who is taken to his limits, and a long way beyond, seeking to understand a man who can only be understood through his Aboriginality. Funny, incisive and revealing, The Short Long Book is a compelling portrait of a man who could be described as the soul of the game, as seen by Australia's greatest sportswriter.
Father Peter Kennedy, of Saint Mary's Catholic Church in South Brisbane, was sacked by his bishop in February of 2009 - essentially for being too good a parish priest, and stretching the bounds and definitions of community to include non-Catholics, gay and divorced souls.
A selection of articles first published in the Melbourne TAge' and collected with the intention of presenting the writer's view of the newspaper as a medium.
This book is an answer to the despair of Mark Latham's Diaries. Tom Uren is a child of the Great Depression whose politics were forged by his experience of the Burma Railway where he served under Weary Dunlop and saw how engendering a collective spirit saved lives. From 1976-77, Tom Uren was deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party. He was Labor's first environment spokesman, is a long-time activist for world peace and in 1998 was voted a National Living Treasure. The Fight is an intimate but unsparing portrait of Uren by author and journalist Martin Flanagan. It is also Uren's view of the spirit that needs to be re-awakened for Australia to move forward in a balanced and positive way.The Fight will be supported by Radio interviews with the author in Vic, NSW, Qld and SA. Press interviews and reviews have been scheduled for all National major daily papers.
Invited by Footscray AFL coach Terry Wheeler to observe the club over the course of the year, Flanagan has recorded the season and a portrait of the club. Through the events that he sees over the course of the season the author also examines issues such as racism, injuries, and the future of football clubs and Australian football. Flanagan is a journalist for the Melbourne 'Age' and has written a novel, 'Going Away'.
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