
Indiana Jones' whip and Kane's sled go up for auction
The Summer Entertainment Auction being held July 15-19 by Heritage Auctions also includes sci-fi gems from the Star Wars galaxy, such as a filming miniature of Luke Skywalker's X-wing star fighter used in Industrial Light & Magic's effects work for The Empire Strikes Back, and the light sabres brandished by Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi and Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith.
The Rosebud sled from the title character's childhood sits at the center of Orson Welles' 1941 Citizen Kane.
It's the last word tycoon Charles Foster Kane speaks before his death at the opening of the film that is regarded by many critics groups as the greatest ever made.
Long thought lost, the sled is one of three of the prop known to have survived.
It's owned by Gremlins director Joe Dante, who stumbled on it when he was filming on the former RKO Pictures lot in 1984.
Dante was not a collector, but knew the value of the sled and quietly preserved it for decades, putting it as an Easter egg into four of his own films.
Ford gave the Indiana Jones whip going up for auction to then-Prince Charles at the 1989 UK premiere of The Last Crusade.
It was given as a gift to Princess Diana, who gave it to the current owner.
"These aren't just props. They're mythic objects," Joe Maddalena, Heritage's executive vice president, said in a statement.
"They tell the story of Hollywood's greatest moments, one piece at a time."
Also going up for sale are a blue velvet suit that Mike Myers wore as Austin Powers in Goldmember, and a Citroen 2CV driven by Roger Moore as James Bond in For Your Eyes Only, one of the films Myers was parodying.
The auction also includes essential artefacts from the collection of legendary director Cecil B DeMille, including a promotional pair of the titular tablets from DeMille's The Ten Commandments, which the director had cut from stone from Mount Sinai.
Many of movies' most sought-after props are going up for auction, including the Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane, Macaulay Culkin's knit snow cap from Home Alone and a whip wielded by Harrison Ford during the Holy Grail trials of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
The Summer Entertainment Auction being held July 15-19 by Heritage Auctions also includes sci-fi gems from the Star Wars galaxy, such as a filming miniature of Luke Skywalker's X-wing star fighter used in Industrial Light & Magic's effects work for The Empire Strikes Back, and the light sabres brandished by Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi and Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith.
The Rosebud sled from the title character's childhood sits at the center of Orson Welles' 1941 Citizen Kane.
It's the last word tycoon Charles Foster Kane speaks before his death at the opening of the film that is regarded by many critics groups as the greatest ever made.
Long thought lost, the sled is one of three of the prop known to have survived.
It's owned by Gremlins director Joe Dante, who stumbled on it when he was filming on the former RKO Pictures lot in 1984.
Dante was not a collector, but knew the value of the sled and quietly preserved it for decades, putting it as an Easter egg into four of his own films.
Ford gave the Indiana Jones whip going up for auction to then-Prince Charles at the 1989 UK premiere of The Last Crusade.
It was given as a gift to Princess Diana, who gave it to the current owner.
"These aren't just props. They're mythic objects," Joe Maddalena, Heritage's executive vice president, said in a statement.
"They tell the story of Hollywood's greatest moments, one piece at a time."
Also going up for sale are a blue velvet suit that Mike Myers wore as Austin Powers in Goldmember, and a Citroen 2CV driven by Roger Moore as James Bond in For Your Eyes Only, one of the films Myers was parodying.
The auction also includes essential artefacts from the collection of legendary director Cecil B DeMille, including a promotional pair of the titular tablets from DeMille's The Ten Commandments, which the director had cut from stone from Mount Sinai.
Many of movies' most sought-after props are going up for auction, including the Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane, Macaulay Culkin's knit snow cap from Home Alone and a whip wielded by Harrison Ford during the Holy Grail trials of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
The Summer Entertainment Auction being held July 15-19 by Heritage Auctions also includes sci-fi gems from the Star Wars galaxy, such as a filming miniature of Luke Skywalker's X-wing star fighter used in Industrial Light & Magic's effects work for The Empire Strikes Back, and the light sabres brandished by Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi and Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith.
The Rosebud sled from the title character's childhood sits at the center of Orson Welles' 1941 Citizen Kane.
It's the last word tycoon Charles Foster Kane speaks before his death at the opening of the film that is regarded by many critics groups as the greatest ever made.
Long thought lost, the sled is one of three of the prop known to have survived.
It's owned by Gremlins director Joe Dante, who stumbled on it when he was filming on the former RKO Pictures lot in 1984.
Dante was not a collector, but knew the value of the sled and quietly preserved it for decades, putting it as an Easter egg into four of his own films.
Ford gave the Indiana Jones whip going up for auction to then-Prince Charles at the 1989 UK premiere of The Last Crusade.
It was given as a gift to Princess Diana, who gave it to the current owner.
"These aren't just props. They're mythic objects," Joe Maddalena, Heritage's executive vice president, said in a statement.
"They tell the story of Hollywood's greatest moments, one piece at a time."
Also going up for sale are a blue velvet suit that Mike Myers wore as Austin Powers in Goldmember, and a Citroen 2CV driven by Roger Moore as James Bond in For Your Eyes Only, one of the films Myers was parodying.
The auction also includes essential artefacts from the collection of legendary director Cecil B DeMille, including a promotional pair of the titular tablets from DeMille's The Ten Commandments, which the director had cut from stone from Mount Sinai.
Many of movies' most sought-after props are going up for auction, including the Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane, Macaulay Culkin's knit snow cap from Home Alone and a whip wielded by Harrison Ford during the Holy Grail trials of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
The Summer Entertainment Auction being held July 15-19 by Heritage Auctions also includes sci-fi gems from the Star Wars galaxy, such as a filming miniature of Luke Skywalker's X-wing star fighter used in Industrial Light & Magic's effects work for The Empire Strikes Back, and the light sabres brandished by Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi and Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith.
The Rosebud sled from the title character's childhood sits at the center of Orson Welles' 1941 Citizen Kane.
It's the last word tycoon Charles Foster Kane speaks before his death at the opening of the film that is regarded by many critics groups as the greatest ever made.
Long thought lost, the sled is one of three of the prop known to have survived.
It's owned by Gremlins director Joe Dante, who stumbled on it when he was filming on the former RKO Pictures lot in 1984.
Dante was not a collector, but knew the value of the sled and quietly preserved it for decades, putting it as an Easter egg into four of his own films.
Ford gave the Indiana Jones whip going up for auction to then-Prince Charles at the 1989 UK premiere of The Last Crusade.
It was given as a gift to Princess Diana, who gave it to the current owner.
"These aren't just props. They're mythic objects," Joe Maddalena, Heritage's executive vice president, said in a statement.
"They tell the story of Hollywood's greatest moments, one piece at a time."
Also going up for sale are a blue velvet suit that Mike Myers wore as Austin Powers in Goldmember, and a Citroen 2CV driven by Roger Moore as James Bond in For Your Eyes Only, one of the films Myers was parodying.
The auction also includes essential artefacts from the collection of legendary director Cecil B DeMille, including a promotional pair of the titular tablets from DeMille's The Ten Commandments, which the director had cut from stone from Mount Sinai.
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Perth Now
5 hours ago
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Nicholas Hoult speaks out on Kelsey Grammer's Beast return for Avengers: Doomsday
Nicholas Hoult is 'excited' to see what Marvel does with Kelsey Grammer's Beast in Avengers: Doomsday. The 70-year-old actor portrayed the mutant superhero in 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014, and with Grammer set to reprise his role for Marvel's upcoming team-up blockbuster, Hoult - who played a younger Beast from 2011's X-Men: First Class to Dark Phoenix in 2019 - has now opened up on getting the chance to see Grammer back in action as the character for Avengers: Doomsday. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, the 35-year-old actor said: 'Kelsey was a great Beast. He was the Beast I saw when I was a kid.' The Superman star added he was also glad to see Grammer's fellow X-Men stars Sir Patrick Stewart (Professor X), Sir Ian McKellen (Magneto) and James Marsden (Cyclops) get the chance to suit up once again for the 2026 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film. Hoult said: 'Those were the characters that I got to watch in X-Men movies. I'm excited to see what they do with it. 'It'll be fun to see how they incorporate those characters into that world.' Even so, the Nosferatu actor insisted he would not appear in Avengers: Doomsday as a younger Beast, and bluntly replied, 'no' when asked if he had been approached by Marvel to reprise his role. As well as Grammer, Stewart, McKellen and Marsden, other X-Men alums set to reprise their repective roles for Avengers: Doomsday include Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler), Rebecca Romijn (Mystique) and Channing Tatum - who portrayed Gambit in last year's Deadpool and Wolverine. Cumming recently teased he could be fighting Pedro Pascal's Mr. Fantastic in the upcoming movie. During a video interview with Buzzfeed UK, Cumming said: 'I was learning stunts yesterday for some fight scene and I just think, I'm 60 years old. 23 years ago, I played that superhero. 'I was kind of old for a superhero even then. And now I'm back doing it. And that, to me, is hilarious. 'I'm sort of learning these fights and I'm like, 'What? Who am I fighting with?' And they said, 'You're hitting Pedro Pascal against the head,' or something.' The actor - who played Nightcrawler in 2003's X2: X-Men United - added he was 'amazed and excited' to be returning as the mutant for Avengers: Doomsday. Speaking with fellow X-Men alum Olivia Munn for Collider, Cumming said: 'Isn't it nuts? I'm excited and amazed. It's been 23 years since I was a superhero.' Cumming also revealed the makeup process for Nightcrawler had been drastically cut down since his last appearance in X2: X-Men United. He continued: 'I've had some makeup tests already for the role, but what's great about it was that before it was about four and a half hours to apply it, but now it's only 90 minutes. 'Before, all of the tattoos were done by hand. They hadn't decided on them before we started filming. Now, they just stick onto my face. It's a game changer. 'I'm going back to being a 60-year-old superhero, and everyone seems really lovely.' Avengers: Doomsday will likely see the X-Men, the New Avengers and the Fantastic Four join forces to try to stop the dreaded Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.), who has cataclysmic plans for the Multiverse.


The Advertiser
11 hours ago
- The Advertiser
When you realise you're being subjected to gay conversion therapy
New releases include A Memoir of Freedom by Cheng Lei and King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby, the novel that sparked a bidding war. Tim Pocock. Hachette. $34.99. Tim Pocock, opera singer and actor in movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine and TV's Dance Academy, says he always knew that being gay was out of the question. Raised in a devout Catholic family and attending a prestigious private school with links to Opus Dei, he struggled desperately to hide his sexuality. As his musical and stage talents blossomed, bullying deepened his despair. After his mother, facing her own battle with ovarian cancer, convinced her only son to come with her to therapy, he realised he was being subjected to gay conversation therapy. Olympian Ian Thorpe calls Pocock's story of heartbreak and healing a "brave and important memoir". Lynette Ramsay Silver. Sally Milner Publishing. $39.99. "Now that I have uncovered so much more about what happened on Bangka Island, I refuse to stay silent, to be a party to any further cover-up." So writes Lynette Ramsay Silver in the foreword to her compelling book about Australia's most famous wartime nurse, Vivian Bullwinkel. Bullwinkel was the sole survivor when Japanese troops machine-gunned 21 military nurses and one civilian on Bangka Island, near Sumatra, in 1942. Silver writes that accounts of the atrocity were heavily sanitised and distorted, against Bullwinkel's wishes. The author's painstaking detective work reveals the brutal and shocking truth about what the nurses endured. Cheng Lei. HarperCollins. $35.99. Australian-Chinese television journalist Cheng Lei spent more than three years imprisoned in Beijing after being arrested in 2020 by the Chinese Communist Party's feared Ministry of State Security. Facing trumped-up charges for "supplying state secrets to overseas organisations" at a time when China had Australia in a COVID-era diplomatic deep freeze, it was clear that she was being used as human leverage - a victim of hostage diplomacy. Cheng, now a presenter for Sky News in Australia, has written a gripping, intimate and no-holds-barred account of her time as prisoner 21003 and the daily battle to maintain her health and sanity. Tom Gilling. Allen & Unwin. $34.99. In July 1942, Hitler's brilliant tactician, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and his Afrika Korps, were closing in on Cairo. If the "Desert Fox" could defeat the Allies the Axis would control the Suez Canal, the oilfields of the Middle East and likely Malta and the Mediterranean. In their way, at El Alamein, was the British Eighth Army, stiffened by the 9th Australian Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division. Gilling paints a visceral picture of bloody battles fought in heat, chaos and desperation by men who refused to break. Churchill later described Rommel's defeat as "the end of the beginning". Moira Macdonald. Bloomsbury. $32.99. When you think of a love triangle, usually all parties are aware - to some extent - of what's going on. But nothing can be further from the truth with Moira Macdonald's debut novel. This charming story begins when April leaves an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at her local bookstore. But it's Laura who finds the note, thinking Westley left it for her. The two women start up correspondence with each other, while Westley is completely oblivious to everything unfolding around him. It's a heartwarming web of mistaken identities that is a love letter to books and the stores that house them. S. A. Cosby. Headline. $34.99. Shawn A. Cosby has been described as a "prince of the literary action thriller". Screen rights for King of Ashes, the Virginia-based writer's fifth Southern noir crime thriller, sparked a bidding war eventually won by Steven Spielberg, Netflix and the production company of Michelle and Barack Obama. That speaks volumes for the action, emotion and visual storytelling power of Cosby's Godfather-inspired saga of Roman Carruthers, a big-city investment banker, who returns home when a hit-and-run accident puts his father into a coma. Except, of course, it wasn't an accident and Roman's kin and their crematorium business now need his protection from ruthless local gangsters. Etgar Keret. Scribe. $29.99. The latest of Israeli writer Etgar Keret's collections of short stories - or "fictional thought-experiments" - to be translated into English contains 33 ruminations and shrewdly sketched observations of humanity and human interaction. Sometimes dark and sad and sometimes irreverent, these random vignettes range across all sorts of everyday scenarios of modern life, from yoga classes, TV game shows and AI companions, to weird flights of fancy with aliens, squirrels and time travel. The stories are concise and comic but hardly ever flippant as Keret takes only a few pages to explore with a wry but affectionate eye the ironies, anxieties and absurdities of contemporary existence. Lucy Nelson. Simon & Schuster. $32.99. Lucy Nelson's collection of short fiction stories about women who don't have children compassionately sketches a diverse array of characters who are not, and never will be, mothers - for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of circumstances. And they feel every way it is possible to feel about it. Whether they've chosen their childlessness or not, each woman's inner voice explores the freedom, heartache, fear or humour of that child-shaped space in her life - from the ballet dancer whose body has betrayed her to the elderly spinster sisters with a found family, to the woman haunted by the ghost of a stillborn daughter. New releases include A Memoir of Freedom by Cheng Lei and King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby, the novel that sparked a bidding war. Tim Pocock. Hachette. $34.99. Tim Pocock, opera singer and actor in movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine and TV's Dance Academy, says he always knew that being gay was out of the question. Raised in a devout Catholic family and attending a prestigious private school with links to Opus Dei, he struggled desperately to hide his sexuality. As his musical and stage talents blossomed, bullying deepened his despair. After his mother, facing her own battle with ovarian cancer, convinced her only son to come with her to therapy, he realised he was being subjected to gay conversation therapy. Olympian Ian Thorpe calls Pocock's story of heartbreak and healing a "brave and important memoir". Lynette Ramsay Silver. Sally Milner Publishing. $39.99. "Now that I have uncovered so much more about what happened on Bangka Island, I refuse to stay silent, to be a party to any further cover-up." So writes Lynette Ramsay Silver in the foreword to her compelling book about Australia's most famous wartime nurse, Vivian Bullwinkel. Bullwinkel was the sole survivor when Japanese troops machine-gunned 21 military nurses and one civilian on Bangka Island, near Sumatra, in 1942. Silver writes that accounts of the atrocity were heavily sanitised and distorted, against Bullwinkel's wishes. The author's painstaking detective work reveals the brutal and shocking truth about what the nurses endured. Cheng Lei. HarperCollins. $35.99. Australian-Chinese television journalist Cheng Lei spent more than three years imprisoned in Beijing after being arrested in 2020 by the Chinese Communist Party's feared Ministry of State Security. Facing trumped-up charges for "supplying state secrets to overseas organisations" at a time when China had Australia in a COVID-era diplomatic deep freeze, it was clear that she was being used as human leverage - a victim of hostage diplomacy. Cheng, now a presenter for Sky News in Australia, has written a gripping, intimate and no-holds-barred account of her time as prisoner 21003 and the daily battle to maintain her health and sanity. Tom Gilling. Allen & Unwin. $34.99. In July 1942, Hitler's brilliant tactician, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and his Afrika Korps, were closing in on Cairo. If the "Desert Fox" could defeat the Allies the Axis would control the Suez Canal, the oilfields of the Middle East and likely Malta and the Mediterranean. In their way, at El Alamein, was the British Eighth Army, stiffened by the 9th Australian Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division. Gilling paints a visceral picture of bloody battles fought in heat, chaos and desperation by men who refused to break. Churchill later described Rommel's defeat as "the end of the beginning". Moira Macdonald. Bloomsbury. $32.99. When you think of a love triangle, usually all parties are aware - to some extent - of what's going on. But nothing can be further from the truth with Moira Macdonald's debut novel. This charming story begins when April leaves an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at her local bookstore. But it's Laura who finds the note, thinking Westley left it for her. The two women start up correspondence with each other, while Westley is completely oblivious to everything unfolding around him. It's a heartwarming web of mistaken identities that is a love letter to books and the stores that house them. S. A. Cosby. Headline. $34.99. Shawn A. Cosby has been described as a "prince of the literary action thriller". Screen rights for King of Ashes, the Virginia-based writer's fifth Southern noir crime thriller, sparked a bidding war eventually won by Steven Spielberg, Netflix and the production company of Michelle and Barack Obama. That speaks volumes for the action, emotion and visual storytelling power of Cosby's Godfather-inspired saga of Roman Carruthers, a big-city investment banker, who returns home when a hit-and-run accident puts his father into a coma. Except, of course, it wasn't an accident and Roman's kin and their crematorium business now need his protection from ruthless local gangsters. Etgar Keret. Scribe. $29.99. The latest of Israeli writer Etgar Keret's collections of short stories - or "fictional thought-experiments" - to be translated into English contains 33 ruminations and shrewdly sketched observations of humanity and human interaction. Sometimes dark and sad and sometimes irreverent, these random vignettes range across all sorts of everyday scenarios of modern life, from yoga classes, TV game shows and AI companions, to weird flights of fancy with aliens, squirrels and time travel. The stories are concise and comic but hardly ever flippant as Keret takes only a few pages to explore with a wry but affectionate eye the ironies, anxieties and absurdities of contemporary existence. Lucy Nelson. Simon & Schuster. $32.99. Lucy Nelson's collection of short fiction stories about women who don't have children compassionately sketches a diverse array of characters who are not, and never will be, mothers - for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of circumstances. And they feel every way it is possible to feel about it. Whether they've chosen their childlessness or not, each woman's inner voice explores the freedom, heartache, fear or humour of that child-shaped space in her life - from the ballet dancer whose body has betrayed her to the elderly spinster sisters with a found family, to the woman haunted by the ghost of a stillborn daughter. New releases include A Memoir of Freedom by Cheng Lei and King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby, the novel that sparked a bidding war. Tim Pocock. Hachette. $34.99. Tim Pocock, opera singer and actor in movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine and TV's Dance Academy, says he always knew that being gay was out of the question. Raised in a devout Catholic family and attending a prestigious private school with links to Opus Dei, he struggled desperately to hide his sexuality. As his musical and stage talents blossomed, bullying deepened his despair. After his mother, facing her own battle with ovarian cancer, convinced her only son to come with her to therapy, he realised he was being subjected to gay conversation therapy. Olympian Ian Thorpe calls Pocock's story of heartbreak and healing a "brave and important memoir". Lynette Ramsay Silver. Sally Milner Publishing. $39.99. "Now that I have uncovered so much more about what happened on Bangka Island, I refuse to stay silent, to be a party to any further cover-up." So writes Lynette Ramsay Silver in the foreword to her compelling book about Australia's most famous wartime nurse, Vivian Bullwinkel. Bullwinkel was the sole survivor when Japanese troops machine-gunned 21 military nurses and one civilian on Bangka Island, near Sumatra, in 1942. Silver writes that accounts of the atrocity were heavily sanitised and distorted, against Bullwinkel's wishes. The author's painstaking detective work reveals the brutal and shocking truth about what the nurses endured. Cheng Lei. HarperCollins. $35.99. Australian-Chinese television journalist Cheng Lei spent more than three years imprisoned in Beijing after being arrested in 2020 by the Chinese Communist Party's feared Ministry of State Security. Facing trumped-up charges for "supplying state secrets to overseas organisations" at a time when China had Australia in a COVID-era diplomatic deep freeze, it was clear that she was being used as human leverage - a victim of hostage diplomacy. Cheng, now a presenter for Sky News in Australia, has written a gripping, intimate and no-holds-barred account of her time as prisoner 21003 and the daily battle to maintain her health and sanity. Tom Gilling. Allen & Unwin. $34.99. In July 1942, Hitler's brilliant tactician, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and his Afrika Korps, were closing in on Cairo. If the "Desert Fox" could defeat the Allies the Axis would control the Suez Canal, the oilfields of the Middle East and likely Malta and the Mediterranean. In their way, at El Alamein, was the British Eighth Army, stiffened by the 9th Australian Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division. Gilling paints a visceral picture of bloody battles fought in heat, chaos and desperation by men who refused to break. Churchill later described Rommel's defeat as "the end of the beginning". Moira Macdonald. Bloomsbury. $32.99. When you think of a love triangle, usually all parties are aware - to some extent - of what's going on. But nothing can be further from the truth with Moira Macdonald's debut novel. This charming story begins when April leaves an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at her local bookstore. But it's Laura who finds the note, thinking Westley left it for her. The two women start up correspondence with each other, while Westley is completely oblivious to everything unfolding around him. It's a heartwarming web of mistaken identities that is a love letter to books and the stores that house them. S. A. Cosby. Headline. $34.99. Shawn A. Cosby has been described as a "prince of the literary action thriller". Screen rights for King of Ashes, the Virginia-based writer's fifth Southern noir crime thriller, sparked a bidding war eventually won by Steven Spielberg, Netflix and the production company of Michelle and Barack Obama. That speaks volumes for the action, emotion and visual storytelling power of Cosby's Godfather-inspired saga of Roman Carruthers, a big-city investment banker, who returns home when a hit-and-run accident puts his father into a coma. Except, of course, it wasn't an accident and Roman's kin and their crematorium business now need his protection from ruthless local gangsters. Etgar Keret. Scribe. $29.99. The latest of Israeli writer Etgar Keret's collections of short stories - or "fictional thought-experiments" - to be translated into English contains 33 ruminations and shrewdly sketched observations of humanity and human interaction. Sometimes dark and sad and sometimes irreverent, these random vignettes range across all sorts of everyday scenarios of modern life, from yoga classes, TV game shows and AI companions, to weird flights of fancy with aliens, squirrels and time travel. The stories are concise and comic but hardly ever flippant as Keret takes only a few pages to explore with a wry but affectionate eye the ironies, anxieties and absurdities of contemporary existence. Lucy Nelson. Simon & Schuster. $32.99. Lucy Nelson's collection of short fiction stories about women who don't have children compassionately sketches a diverse array of characters who are not, and never will be, mothers - for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of circumstances. And they feel every way it is possible to feel about it. Whether they've chosen their childlessness or not, each woman's inner voice explores the freedom, heartache, fear or humour of that child-shaped space in her life - from the ballet dancer whose body has betrayed her to the elderly spinster sisters with a found family, to the woman haunted by the ghost of a stillborn daughter. New releases include A Memoir of Freedom by Cheng Lei and King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby, the novel that sparked a bidding war. Tim Pocock. Hachette. $34.99. Tim Pocock, opera singer and actor in movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine and TV's Dance Academy, says he always knew that being gay was out of the question. Raised in a devout Catholic family and attending a prestigious private school with links to Opus Dei, he struggled desperately to hide his sexuality. As his musical and stage talents blossomed, bullying deepened his despair. After his mother, facing her own battle with ovarian cancer, convinced her only son to come with her to therapy, he realised he was being subjected to gay conversation therapy. Olympian Ian Thorpe calls Pocock's story of heartbreak and healing a "brave and important memoir". Lynette Ramsay Silver. Sally Milner Publishing. $39.99. "Now that I have uncovered so much more about what happened on Bangka Island, I refuse to stay silent, to be a party to any further cover-up." So writes Lynette Ramsay Silver in the foreword to her compelling book about Australia's most famous wartime nurse, Vivian Bullwinkel. Bullwinkel was the sole survivor when Japanese troops machine-gunned 21 military nurses and one civilian on Bangka Island, near Sumatra, in 1942. Silver writes that accounts of the atrocity were heavily sanitised and distorted, against Bullwinkel's wishes. The author's painstaking detective work reveals the brutal and shocking truth about what the nurses endured. Cheng Lei. HarperCollins. $35.99. Australian-Chinese television journalist Cheng Lei spent more than three years imprisoned in Beijing after being arrested in 2020 by the Chinese Communist Party's feared Ministry of State Security. Facing trumped-up charges for "supplying state secrets to overseas organisations" at a time when China had Australia in a COVID-era diplomatic deep freeze, it was clear that she was being used as human leverage - a victim of hostage diplomacy. Cheng, now a presenter for Sky News in Australia, has written a gripping, intimate and no-holds-barred account of her time as prisoner 21003 and the daily battle to maintain her health and sanity. Tom Gilling. Allen & Unwin. $34.99. In July 1942, Hitler's brilliant tactician, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and his Afrika Korps, were closing in on Cairo. If the "Desert Fox" could defeat the Allies the Axis would control the Suez Canal, the oilfields of the Middle East and likely Malta and the Mediterranean. In their way, at El Alamein, was the British Eighth Army, stiffened by the 9th Australian Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division. Gilling paints a visceral picture of bloody battles fought in heat, chaos and desperation by men who refused to break. Churchill later described Rommel's defeat as "the end of the beginning". Moira Macdonald. Bloomsbury. $32.99. When you think of a love triangle, usually all parties are aware - to some extent - of what's going on. But nothing can be further from the truth with Moira Macdonald's debut novel. This charming story begins when April leaves an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at her local bookstore. But it's Laura who finds the note, thinking Westley left it for her. The two women start up correspondence with each other, while Westley is completely oblivious to everything unfolding around him. It's a heartwarming web of mistaken identities that is a love letter to books and the stores that house them. S. A. Cosby. Headline. $34.99. Shawn A. Cosby has been described as a "prince of the literary action thriller". Screen rights for King of Ashes, the Virginia-based writer's fifth Southern noir crime thriller, sparked a bidding war eventually won by Steven Spielberg, Netflix and the production company of Michelle and Barack Obama. That speaks volumes for the action, emotion and visual storytelling power of Cosby's Godfather-inspired saga of Roman Carruthers, a big-city investment banker, who returns home when a hit-and-run accident puts his father into a coma. Except, of course, it wasn't an accident and Roman's kin and their crematorium business now need his protection from ruthless local gangsters. Etgar Keret. Scribe. $29.99. The latest of Israeli writer Etgar Keret's collections of short stories - or "fictional thought-experiments" - to be translated into English contains 33 ruminations and shrewdly sketched observations of humanity and human interaction. Sometimes dark and sad and sometimes irreverent, these random vignettes range across all sorts of everyday scenarios of modern life, from yoga classes, TV game shows and AI companions, to weird flights of fancy with aliens, squirrels and time travel. The stories are concise and comic but hardly ever flippant as Keret takes only a few pages to explore with a wry but affectionate eye the ironies, anxieties and absurdities of contemporary existence. Lucy Nelson. Simon & Schuster. $32.99. Lucy Nelson's collection of short fiction stories about women who don't have children compassionately sketches a diverse array of characters who are not, and never will be, mothers - for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of circumstances. And they feel every way it is possible to feel about it. Whether they've chosen their childlessness or not, each woman's inner voice explores the freedom, heartache, fear or humour of that child-shaped space in her life - from the ballet dancer whose body has betrayed her to the elderly spinster sisters with a found family, to the woman haunted by the ghost of a stillborn daughter.


Perth Now
20-06-2025
- Perth Now
Coldplay to re-release nine albums on records made from recycled plastic battles
Coldplay are set to reissue nine of their albums on records made from recycled plastic bottles. The Viva la Vida band are continuing their environmental crusade by reissuing their material on EcoRecord LPs - which are claimed to reduce carbon emissions during the manufacturing process by 85 per cent when compared to traditional vinyl production. Jen Ivory, managing director of Coldplay's record label Parlophone, said: "We are incredibly proud to partner with artists such as Coldplay who share our commitment to a more sustainable future for music. "The shift to EcoRecord LP for their releases is a testament to what's possible when innovation meets intention. "It's not just about a new product, it's about pioneering manufacturing that significantly reduces environmental impact, providing fans with the same high-quality audio experience while setting a new standard for physical music production." The band are re-issuing their debut album Parachutes (2000), A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002), X+Y (2005), Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends (2008), Mylo Xyloto (2011), Ghost Stories (2014), A Head Full of Dreams (2015), Everyday Life (2019) and Music of the Spheres (2021) in an eco-friendly manner. The LPs are made up of around nine recycled bottles, which are cleaned and process into small pellets before being moulded into records. Coldplay's most recent album - 2024's Moon Music - has already been released on an EcoRecord LP. The Clocks band are attempting to tour in an environmentally friendly way but frontman Chris Martin previously admitted there is still "quite a long way to go" to find a fully eco-friendly way to perform around the world. The 48-year-old singer told BBC Radio 2 in 2021: "We've been working with some amazing brands to see how we can cut down as much of the environmental impact as possible. "We still have quite a long way to go. But we've already come quite a long way." Coldplay teamed up with direct air capture pioneers Climeworks to ensure that their Music of the Spheres World Tour had a net-zero carbon footprint. They said in a statement: "Playing live and finding connection with people is ultimately why we exist as a band. We've been planning this tour for years, and we're super excited to play songs from across our whole time together. "At the same time, we're very conscious that the planet is facing a climate crisis. "So we've spent the last two years consulting with environmental experts to make this tour as sustainable as possible, and, just as importantly, to harness the tour's potential to push things forward. "We won't get everything right, but we're committed to doing everything we can and sharing what we learn. It's a work in progress and we're really grateful for the help we've had so far."