In Tasmania (Nicholas Shakespeare, Knopf, $39.95 hb, ISBN 1740512715, November)

Quite a period of time ago I read an interesting essay in Peter Craven’s Best Australian Essays 2002 regarding Nicholas Shakespeare (then best known as Bruce Chatwin’s biographer) being in possession of some old letters dating back to the late 1700s, given to him by his father. The letters were correspondence from Anthony Fenn Kemp to his brother-in-law, Potter. Inspired by the contents of the letters, Shakespeare set about investigating the story of Fenn Kemp, who was, he would find out: a member of the Rum Corps; a man present at the removal of Bligh; and a one-time Judge-advocate of Sydney. To top it all off, Shakespeare found he was related to Kemp’s Tasmanian descendants through the illegitimate line of Kemp’s mistress! Once the seed was sown to find out more about Kemp, Shakespeare came across myriad other Tasmanian stories and connections: a pair of elderly sisters who left their farm but once in a lifetime, an ancestor who played tennis with the Kaiser; and connections to a cast of well-known characters such as Errol Flynn and Merle Oberon. This was his personal quest, and it is written in a very readable and amusing style. Its audience is broad-based in spite of the title and will appeal to anyone who enjoys reading about the coincidences of life.

Damon Hawker is a co-owner of Hobart bookstore Ellison Hawker

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2004, Thorpe-Bowker