Background
Beverley Eley was born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Her date of birth is unknown.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
book
Ion Idriess
(A biography of writer Jack Idriess whose life is filled w...)
A biography of writer Jack Idriess whose life is filled with the same kind of adventures, characters, tall tales and passions that fill his books.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1875892087/?tag=2022091-20
1995
Book of David Helfgott
(Chronicles the life of David Helfgott, the Australian pia...)
Chronicles the life of David Helfgott, the Australian pianist who was a child prodigy, suffered a mental breakdown, and slowly recovered and began performing once again.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0207191050/?tag=2022091-20
1997
Beverley Eley
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Beverley Eley was formerly Publicity Manager for Angus and Robertson Bookshops Australia, Marketing Manager for Cassell Australia Collier Macmillan and resident book reviewer for Australia's Channel 10 for over ten years. She later became Marketing Manager and spokesperson for The Australian Consumers Association where she conduction an ABC talk back segment for some years.
Education
It is known that Beverley holds Bachelor of Arts and Doctor of Phiosophy.
Career
Beverley Eley was formerly a publicity, advertising, and marketing manager in the Australian publishing world. Her first book, the biography Ion Idriess, appeared in 1995. In it, Eley chronicles the eventful life of an Australian journalist and author best known for his sympathetic investigations into the Aboriginal peoples of his continent earlier in the twentieth century.
Her biography touches on several significant events in Idriess’s life, including a bout with typhoid fever in which his mother nursed him back to health but died of the disease herself, a long stint as a mineral and gem prospector, and his heroic service in World War I. Eley also sheds light on the personal problems that plagued Idriess, including a long and unhappy marriage and chronic alcoholism.
In Eley’s second book, she again tackles a complex subject with her look at the life of the pianist David Helfgott. The "Book of David" appeared the same year as a film about Helfgott, "Shine", garnered excellent reviews and eventually an Academy Award. Eley’s 1996 biography, however, “offers a more accurate — and less objectionable — account of the man,” asserted Kevin Kopelson in the London Review of Books.
Eley met with her subject, who has suffered from psychiatric problems for much of his adult life but remains a colorful concert pianist, and the transcripts of Helfgott’s extraordinary circumlocutions lend insight into the demons the virtuoso has battled for so long.
Gabrielle Lord, writing in the Australian Book Review, questioned some of the summary opinions offered by Eley, including her balanced assessment of Helfgott’s tyrannical father. Yet Lord noted that despite “a naivete underlying some of her conclusions,” Eley “has done a prodigious job” in researching Helfgott’s life, especially in “trying to separate the self-serving and the pathetically egocentric voices from those that might have some real awareness and loving insight.”
Achievements
Works
book
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Book of David Helfgott
(Chronicles the life of David Helfgott, the Australian pia...)
1997 -
Ion Idriess
(A biography of writer Jack Idriess whose life is filled w...)
1995
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Book of David Helfgott
Interests
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Born
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Nationality
Australian
Career
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1970 - present