
Show Notes
An elegant Trotskyist, Michael Pablo grew up in Greece to become an urbane revolutionary, who made his presence felt at many of the most significant uprisings of the 20th century in an attempt to build what he called self-managed socialism.
Partnered by his dynamic and fearless wife Elli Dyovoumoti, Pablo was often in great danger, spent time in prison, and made enemies among fellow socialists. But when it came to the Algerian uprising of 1962 against the French, he rolled up his intellectual sleeves and got his hands dirty, helping the Algerians to arm themselves by setting up a gun factory. The story of this venture is worth a movie in its own right.
Clashing with Castro, supporting Solidarity in Poland, Pablo was an influential force without ever becoming a leader. He was ahead of his time in his support for fully-fledged feminism and maintained a strong circle of friends throughout his life.
Hall Greenland’s biography, The Well-Dressed Revolutionary, is an admiring portrait of a man and a time when socially progressive ideas had real momentum and it felt as if the world were tilting towards a raised consciousness on equality and human rights. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
More from Life Sentences Podcast
Errol Flynn is still the most famous Australian actor ever to make it big in Hollywood. Best known for athletic and romantic leads in films like Robin Hood, he had lived the life of an entitled boss on plantations in New Guinea as a fortune hunter before being discovered on the beach at Bondi.
Peter Matthiessen was a giant of American twentieth century letters, and the only writer ever to win the National Book Award in both the fiction and non-fiction categories. He was a complicated man who went to great lengths to escape the privilege he was born into.
Before Ash Barty, there was Evonne Goolagong, the first First Nations champion at Wimbledon. She was a player endowed with natural ability but also handicapped by plenty of disadvantages. To develop her talent at tennis she has to leave home at a very young age and move in with her coach and his family, a story she told in a memoir she wrote many years later with her friend Phil Jarratt.
After the success of her debut novel My Brilliant Career, Australian writer Miles Franklin faced a familiar problem: how to write her next book and what should it be about? Her UK publisher was not keen on her ideas and so she turned to journalism and went undercover to write an exposé of the life of a domestic servant.
Between 1974 and 1991 Frank Arkell was the flamboyant mayor of Wollongong. But his name is forever associated with the infamy of being accused of being part of a paedophile ring. In a sensational twist, he was murdered in his home.