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Roland Perry

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Roland Perry (born 1946) is a Melbourne-based author, best known for his books on cricket and his books on spies. He has written numerous books, both fiction and non-fiction, including 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." Perry has also written biographies on Sir Donald Bradman, Steve Waugh, Keith Miller and Shane Warne among others. Perry recently published his twentieth book; The Ashes: A Celebration, a book commemorating The Ashes.

Career

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 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.’

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. 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.

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. 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). The other covered the 1993 Ashes cricket series between Australia and England, and the hero of the Test matches, spinner Shane Warne (Shane Warne: Master Spinner.) He claimed to have a strong base of contacts within British intelligence, especially MI6, members of which he claimed 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.

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.’ 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.’

Recent non-fiction

After this run of sports writing, Perry turned wrote a biography of Australian General Sir John Monash, a military commander of the First World War. 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, 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.

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. Perry consulted with Bradman for six years and four books resulted: The Don; Bradman’s Best (Random House, 2001); Bradman’s Best Ashes Teams (Random House, 2002); and Bradman’s Invincibles (Hachette, 2008). Perry and Bradman discussed the latter's thoughts on a compilation of a ‘best-ever’ dream team. The book, Bradman’s Best (Random House) was published in Australia and the UK in 2001. 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. 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."

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 wrote Miller’s Luck, The Life and Loves of Keith Miller, Australia’s greatest all-rounder.

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. He included his top ten ‘impacts’ on The Ashes since 1877.

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. "Roland Perry". Random House Australia. Retrieved 2007-12-12.
  3. ‘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.
  4. The Tracking of a Galleon’s Ghost, Omega, 1992.
  5. 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.
  6. Newgate Callendar, New York Times, 1 September 1980.
  7. Arthur Morris, Programme for a Puppet, 2nd printing paperback, Hamlyn Paperbacks, UK, 1981.
  8. Publisher’s Weekly, US 18 June 1980.
  9. Blood is a Stranger, William Heinemann, Australia, 1988; ISBN 085561 160 X
  10. ‘From Mulga Ashtray to Mainstream,’ by Stephen Knight, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 June 1988.
  11. Faces in the Rain, Mandarin Publishing, Australia, 1990; ISBN 1 86330 076 7
  12. 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
  13. The Economist 7 September 1984.
  14. UK Sunday Telegraph, Oliver Pritchett, 15 July 1984.
  15. The Exile: Burchett, Reporter of Conflict, William Heinemann, Australia, 1988; ISBN 0 85561 106 5
  16. Lethal Weapon, Oliver Books, UK, 1993: ISBN 1-870049-79-9
  17. Shane Warne, Master Spinner, Information Australia, Australia, 1993; ISBN 1 86350 149 5
  18. The Fifth Man, Sedgwick & Jackson, UK, 1994
  19. Spies Without Cloaks: The KGB’s Successors; Knight, Amy, Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, US, 1996.
  20. Last of the Cold War Spies, p x, Da Capo Press, Second (Trade Paperback) edition, US, 2006.
  21. Borovik, Genrikh; The Philby Files; Little, Brown & Co. US, 1994.
  22. ‘Victor Ludorum,’ by Kiernan Fagan, The Irish Times; 10 November 1994.
  23. Richard Hall, The Weekend Australian, 14 January 1995.
  24. ‘Following the Moscow Line,’ by Norman Abjorensen, The Sunday Times Canberra, 22 January 1995.
  25. Fellowship of Australian Writers, 2004, FAW National Literary Awards 2004, accessed 16 July 2009
  26. Last of the Cold War Spies, Da Capo Press, US, 2005; ISBN 978-0-306-81428-0
  27. Last of the Cold War Spies, p ix-x, Da Capo Press, Second (Trade Paperback) edition, US, 2006.
  28. Last of the Cold War Spies, First (Hardcover) edition US, 2005.
  29. http://www.hha.com.au/books/9780733622724.html Retrieved 13 July 2009.
  30. 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
  31. 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
  32. Robin Marlar, The Cricketer International, June 2001.
  33. Inside Edge Magazine, December 2000.
  34. Miller’s Luck: the life and loves of Keith Miller, Australia’s greatest all-round cricketer, Random House Australia 2005
  35. Sailing to the Moon, Pennon, Australia, 2008; ISBN 9781920997076
  36. Haigh, Gideon (2004). "No Ball". Game for anything: Writings on Cricket. Melbourne: Black Inc. ISBN 1 86395 309 4.
  37. Haigh, Gideon (2008-11-22). "The First Word". Cricinfo. Retrieved 2009-01-08.
  38. ^ Frith, David. "Fault lines in a hero's tale". Cricinfo. Retrieved 2009-01-08.
  39. ^ Guha, Ramachandra (2005). "Big hitter, Huge Heart". The Monthly: 60–62. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  40. "The Fifth Man". New York Review of Books. 1995-03-23. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |Accessdate= ignored (|accessdate= suggested) (help)
  41. ^ Franks, Warwick (December 2002). "Bradman's Best". The Australian Public Intellectual Network. Retrieved 2009-01-08.
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