Sydney Observed
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Within the space of a few years it came to be regarded as the best single piece ever written about the city. ‘Write the text of a new book about Sydney?’ a distinguished writer asked his publisher. ‘But after Souter, what’s left to say?’
A second hardback edition featuring the iconic illustrations of talented fellow Sydneysider, George Molnar, was released in 1968. It is this edition we proudly reproduce digitally here for the very first time.
In prose that is measured, astute, wry and always entertaining, Gavin Souter has captured the Emerald City’s fortunes, foibles, past and future. He has produced a work that is as timely, relevant and lucid today as it was when first published.
Sydney Observed, illustrated by George Molnar, is a small masterpiece – a book for giving, keeping, reading and re-reading.
Reviews of Sydney Observed
‘Here, for once, is a description of Sydney which is unblinking but good-mannered, appreciative but unsentimental, factual but not a tourists’ guide, opinionated but never eccentric … a brilliant mosaic.’ The Sydney Morning Herald
‘Brilliantly successful.’ The Times Literary Supplement
‘Unfalteringly entertaining.’ The Age
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Gavin Souter AO was born in 1929 in Sydney. He was educated at Kempsey High School and Scots College in Warwick, Queensland, before graduating BA from the University of Sydney. He joined The Sydney Morning Herald as a journalist in 1947 and worked there for 40 years, serving as a correspondent in New York and London and later as an Assistant Editor of the newspaper.
He is the author of eleven works of non-fiction, including A Peculiar People, The Australians in Paraguay (1968), which won the Foundation of Australian Literary Studies award; Lion & Kangaroo, The Initiation of Australia 1901–1919 (1976); Company of Heralds (1981), which also won the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies award; and Heralds and Angels, the House of Fairfax 1841–1990 (1992), which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award.
Gavin was Vice President of the Australian Society of Authors between 1975 and 1978 and Deputy Chairman of the Commonwealth Films Board of Review between 1981 and 1984.
In 1960, he won the W.G. Walkley Award for Australian Journalism; in 1988 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM), and raised to Officer level (AO) in 1995; and in 2001 he was awarded the Centenary Medal.
Gavin lives with his wife in Sydney.
