The author of an unauthorised biography on Paul Keating will appear at next month’s Williamstown Literary Festival despite legal action forcing unsold copies of his book to be pulped.
Dr David Day, author of Paul Keating: The Biography, had an appearance at Bendigo cancelled this month after legal action by the former prime minister.
Dr Day and his publisher, HarperCollins, have so far paid $27,500 in legal costs and apologised to Mr Keating for making unsubstantiated claims in the book that Labor’s elder statesman had dyslexia, which limited his capacity in office and made him over-reliant on the advice of others.
As part of the legal agreement, HarperCollins agreed to pulp all unsold copies at its warehouse and amend any future editions.
Festival founding president Angela Altair said Dr Day would present his book in Williamstown on June 13 but added the discussion would not include anything “inappropriate”.
“Obviously, I wouldn’t want to do anything to offend Paul Keating,” she said.
“One of the reasons we invited David Day to present was because Paul Keating’s one of my heroes, quite frankly.
“But also, Dave’s a noted biographer, who’s also done biographies of other great Labor statesmen like Curtin, etcetera, so we’ll be very careful to make sure that we don’t say anything that’s inappropriate.
“But, at the same time, I’m sure that there’s a lot of interest in David Day because of this controversy and it will be, I’m sure, a very interesting discussion,” Ms Altair said.
“And you know what, David Day is not the first writer who’s run into trouble doing an unauthorised biography, so it’s probably a honourable tradition.”
Dr Day said the legal action did not place any restriction on him being able to speak about his book.
“People are aware of what I’ve said and they’ll read the book accordingly,” he said.
He said other talks were going ahead as part of his book tour around Australia and the decision to cancel his talk at Bendigo library did “not make sense”.
“It’s a disappointing action on behalf of the library,” he said. “This is very lame. Libraries shouldn’t be into silencing authors.”
Goldfields Library Corporation chief executive Chris Kelly said cancelling the talk was reasonable to respect the intent of the legal action. Only copies in HarperCollins’ warehouse were to be destroyed while bookstores are still able to sell the books in stock. Details: willylitfest.org.au.
– with Renee Thompson/Bendigo Advertiser
