Heydays

Graeme Blundell introduces Kershaw’s “delightful and witty memoir Heydays, a personal record of cultural Melbourne in the thirties and forties. And the pages that follow display a account of the bohemia of his youth and tribute to such friends and mentors as the “exuberant” Max Harris, Adrian Lawlor, whose unique character defied description, and Albert Tucker, “The only intellectual with any brains”… It’s a lovely, disrespectful part of our collective archive, as was Alister Kershaw himself… So, this new publication of Heydays is a rare anthropological treat, transporting us somewhat magically to a city he looks back on in his dotage, “With an affection I was too brash to experience at the time”.