Background

Terry Lane was born on June 6, 1939, in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. He is the son of Douglas James and Hilda Irene Smith Lane.

Education

Terry Lane studied at Gawler High School, Evanston, South Australia. Then he attended Stirling Theological College in Melbourne, Australia till 1961.

Career

Prior to working on radio, Lane was a minister for six years, then he worked in the Methodist Department of Christian Education and the ABC's religious department. In 1977 he began a radio talk-back show for the ABC which ran for eleven months. Since 1982 he has been a broadcaster on 3LO, 2BL, 7ZR, and 2NC. In 1995 he returned to ABC Radio National and presented a weekly program, The National Interest. That same year he published his first novel Hectic. In Hectic Lane recounts the adventures of the burnt-out, forty-something teacher David Snoddy, who discovers that his wife Stephanie has been unfaithful and plans revenge on the other man. Damien Broderick from the Australian Book Review compared this novel to those of Kingsley and Martin Amis.

After ten years of hosting the program The National Interest, he retired. From 2003 he was a reviewer of digital photography hardware and software for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. In 2016 he retired from this position. In addition to his career on radio, Lane was a columnist for the Sunday Age, the Age Saturday Extra, and the Australian Way. Lane's other books include As the Twig Is Bent (1979), More than Meets the Ear (1987), Hobbyhorses (1990), God: The Interview (1993), Tit for Tat (1994), Sparrow's Fall (1995), and others.

Achievements

• Terry Lane is probably best known for his daily radio program, which he ran on 3LO, 2BL, 7ZR, and 2NC. The Monash Biographical Dictionary of 20th Century Australia describes Lane as "a capable and empathetic interviewer, though often expounding controversial views."
  
  He is also the winner of the Douglas Wilkie Medal, awarded by the Anti-Football League for doing the least for Australian rules football in the best and fairest manner.

Works

More photos

• book

  • God: the Interview

    (In this provocative and searching book, Terry Lane poses ...)

    1993
  • More Than Meets The Ear

    (More Than Meets The Ear is a collection of interviews and...)

    1987
  • Hectic

    (Hectic is a comedy about a high-school teacher, on burn-o...)

    1993
  • Sparrows fall

    (Sparrows fall is a fictional account of the life of an Au...)

    1995
  • As the Twig Is Bent

    (In As the Twig Is Bent, the author talks to 16 eminent Au...)

    1979
  • Hobbyhorses 1990

Views

Quotations: "One of the things that I always thought was important in my role as an interviewer, was never to pretend that I was objective, because I know I am not objective. I am the most subjective of people. I have a point of view, I have a system of belief, I have my own moral framework, but it's idiosyncratic."

"I would rather live in a co-operative world than in a competitive world. I would rather live in a world which values society and the pertinence of civilization, over individual wealth and accumulation."

Membership

Lane was secretary of the anti-censorship organization Free Speech Victoria.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "But there is much more to Terry Lane than his history. He's an interviewer's interviewer; he's self-effacing but probing, and these days, certainly not afraid of expressing his own opinions. He's gloriously unpredictable, offends listeners of both liberal and conservative inclinations, and delights just as many others." - Geraldine Doogue

Interests

• Music & Bands

  Mozart

Connections

Terry Lane married Valda Florence Thompson in 1962. The marriage produced two children, Andrew Mark and Samantha.

Father:

Douglas James Lane

Mother:

Hilda Irene Lane

Wife:

Valda Florence Thompson