QED

Peter Ryan's new book

October 9, 2011

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… a remarkable range of essays reflecting an independence of view
and a grace of style rare in Australian letters.
The Australian Encyclopedia on Peter Ryan’s literary career

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Peter Ryan
It Strikes Me: Collected Essays 1994–2010
(Quadrant Books, 2011)  $44.95 Hb

Peter Ryan has long been one of Australia’s favourite writers of essays and newspaper columns. His classic World War II memoir, Fear Drive My Feet, has been an enduring bestseller, in print almost continuously for more than fifty years. The fifty-five essays in this collection may justly be called “a late picking”. They range from several moving reflections on the war against Japan in 1941-45 to tales of domestic and farm life, such as the story of his old saddle pony Bonny. Along the way he recalls books, writers and statesmen from whom he has learnt most.

For the last eighteen years, an important part of my life has been the writing of a “column” for Quadrant, and over 150 of these essays have appeared in the magazine’s back pages; never an issue missed. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines “column” (definition 4) as “a regular section of … a magazine on a particular subject or by a particular person”. One can’t complain about acceptance as a person who is “particular”. Quadrant’s courageous and broadminded editors have applied to me no constraints to a “particular subject”, but have let me range the world, as I have freely done ― from consideration of the Green party’s clandestine control by the left-over loony left, to a fond biography of Bonny, my gentle old pony.

On occasion, friends (and others) have accused me of treading too close to Oxford definition number 1: “An upright pillar standing alone”. Withal, I seem not (or not yet) to have forfeited the indulgence of Quadrant’s large tribe of readers. Whenever I have applied for their assistance on some occasion of perplexity, a most warming flow of letters fills my mail, helpful, shrewd, informed and (nearly always) good-natured. I thank every one of them.

These essays from Quadrant magazine reflect the writer’s worldly knowledge accumulated from his variety of employments - including publisher of Australia’s leading university press, soldier, bush timber worker and advertising man. Lately turned eighty-eight, his pen shows no signs of flagging.

Buy Peter Ryan’s It Strikes Me: Collected Essays 1994–2010 in the Quadrant bookshop here…