Piers Morgan has slammed Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s call for “compassion” as they launched their new website for Archewell.
The outspoken Good Morning Britain presenter took to Twitter to brand the pair “Ginge and Cringe” and accused them of “airbrushing” their dads, Prince Charles and Thomas Markle, out of the picture.
The royal couple launched their new website with a touching nod to both their mums, including two cute snaps of the pair as babies – Harry with Diana and Meghan with Doria.
It also included a poem that invited people to join them to “build a better world one act of compassion at a time”.
The poem, titled A Letter for 2021, begins, “I am my mother’s son. And I am our son’s mother. Together we bring you Archewell,” before going on to describe how they witnessed “the best of humanity” from their “mothers and strangers alike”.
But taking to Twitter, Piers Morgan said, “Sadly, Ginge and Cringe’s ‘compassion’ and ‘humanity’ doesn’t extend to either of their fathers, both of whom have been airbrushed out of this nauseating bilge.”
He also accompanied the scathing tweet with three sick-face emojis.
And in a follow up tweet replying to someone who asked him, “You really don’t like them, do you Piers?”, he blasted, “No. I think they’re a pair of vapid little wastrels.”
He continued the couple were “exploiting their royal titles for vast commercial gain whilst doing none of the duty that being a member of the Royal Family entails”.
The tirade concluded, “It’s shameless, shameful and the Queen should stop them doing it by removing the titles.”
Mr Morgan’s words come after the couple have been involved in a string of public tiffs.
Meghan Markle famously had a rather public falling out with her dad, as the pair waged a battle via the press.
It is understood Thomas, who prior to Meg’s royal marriage had been very close with his daughter, now has very little contact with his daughter whatsoever.
And Harry and William are also thought not to be on speaking terms after the two royal couples’ relationship came to an end.
But Piers himself isn’t exempt from the list – after he claimed Meghan “ghosted” him when she married Prince Harry.
The 53-year-old says he was friendly with Meghan when she was a TV actress, but she has now turned her back on their friendship.
And he hasn’t been shy in making his feelings known toward the royal couple in his regular slot on Good Morning Britain, on social media – or anywhere else.
The calls for compassion from the couple on their new website were also accompanied by announcements of upcoming partnerships between their foundation and several tech and research-focused groups to pursue their aims.
The organisations include the Center for Humane Technology which works to create more compassionate online communities.
It comes after Prince Harry slammed social media as a “crisis of hate” while Meghan revealed the trolling she had received online was “almost unsurvivable”.
The website also promoted the couple’s Spotify and Netflix deals that are under the umbrella of Archewell.
Archewell – A Letter for 2021
“I am my mother’s son. And I am our son’s mother. Together we bring you Archewell.
“We believe in the best of humanity. Because we have seen the best of humanity. We have experienced compassion and kindness.
“From our mothers and strangers alike. In the face of fear, struggle and pain, it can be easy to lose sight of this.
“Together, we can choose courage, healing, and connection. Together, we can choose to put compassion in action.
“We invite you to join us. As we work to build a better world. One act of compassion at a time.”
This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission
Justin Bieber is studying to become a minister – hoping to help lead Hillsong after the firing of his preacher pal Carl Lentz, according to a report.
“Justin doesn’t plan to give up his music career, but he feels there’s a bigger calling out there for him,” a source told OK! magazine.
“He wants to be a full-fledged minister next year,” the source insisted of the 26-year-old Holy singer.
The pop superstar has long praised Hillsong for saving him from his “dark” days of drugs, public meltdowns and arrests, becoming the church’s most high-profile backer and also a member of the choir, the report noted.
The Biebs grew close to the megachurch’s hipster pastor Lentz, finding him fame of his own – and now thinks he can help steer the church after Lentz’s firing for “moral failures,” after he admitted cheating on his wife.
“Justin believes he can take a leadership position in restoring order,” the source told OK!
“Justin has never felt happier or healthier, and he says he owes it to the church,” the source said.
This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission
Matt Doran, the host of Channel Seven's Weekend Sunrise, is engaged to Kendall Bora, the executive producer of Nine's rival breakfast show Weekend Today.
The TV presenter, 37, proposed to Kendall, 30, on New Year's Eve, presenting his girlfriend-of-one-year with a stunning diamond ring.
Matt announced the happy news on Instagram on Friday, sharing a gallery of photos of the couple in the moments after Kendall said 'yes'.
'Officially sleeping with the enemy': Matt Doran (left), the host of Channel Seven's Weekend Sunrise, is engaged to Kendall Bora (right), the executive producer of Nine's rival breakfast show Weekend Today
Matt explained in the lengthy caption that he'd made a few unsuccessful attempts to surprise Kendall with a proposal before everything came together on Thursday.
'Despite it all, she still said yes, and I'm now the luckiest man in the cosmos... and officially sleeping with the enemy,' he wrote, referencing the fact the pair work for rival TV networks.
The couple began dating in 2019 after being introduced by mutual friends, but it was a 'slow burn' before things between them developed further.
She's pleased! The TV presenter, 37, proposed to Kendall, 30, on New Year's Eve, presenting his girlfriend-of-one-year with a stunning diamond ring
Wedding bells: Matt announced the happy news on Instagram on Friday, sharing a gallery of photos of the couple in the moments after Kendall said 'yes'
Alright on the night: Matt explained in the lengthy caption that he'd made a few unsuccessful attempts to surprise Kendall with a proposal before everything came together on Thursday
'I'd given up on dating and relationships for the rest for my existence, and she was near enough too,' Matt told The Daily Telegraph in October.
In the same interview, he joked that their romance was like the 'morning show wars'.
He also said they had a tendency to bring out each other's competitive side at home.
'[Kendall] is always furious I am getting up an hour and a half later on Saturdays, swanning in to read the auto-cue, while she's doing the hard work an hour and a half earlier,' he said.
Mum's here! Matt's mother joined the couple to celebrate their engagement
Don't tell the bosses! 'I'm officially sleeping with the enemy,' Matt wrote, referencing the fact the pair work for rival TV networks
Happily ever after: Matt certainly made it a New Year's Eve to remember for Kendall
In December 2019, Kendall was by Matt's side in hospital as he recovered from a double hernia operation.
She was previously in a relationship with I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! host Dr Chris Brown, 42, for about two years, before splitting sometime in 2018.
Matt dated celebrity chef and former MasterChef star Justine Schofield from 2014 to 2017. Justine is now dating retired AFL player Brent Staker.
Their story: The couple began dating in 2019 after being introduced by mutual friends, but it was a 'slow burn' before things between them developed further
Television rivals: Matt (right, with Weekend Sunrise co-host Monique Wright), has been dating Kendall, a senior producer at Channel Nine, for more than a year
Famous ex: Kendall was previously in a relationship with I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! host Dr Chris Brown (left) for about two years, before splitting sometime in 2018
The veteran TV star’s management has released an X-ray of her broken collarbone, sustained after the 67-year-old fell almost five metres on Wednesday night.
Watch the moment Kerri-Anne falls in the video above
Kennerley plays the role of Grandma Berthe in the Australian season of the hit musical, which recently started its string of shows at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre.
An X-ray of Kerri-Anne Kennerley's broken collarbone. Credit: Supplied
The Aussie icon had previously spoken about the physical demands of the show.
“In my big number, I have to get on a trapeze and go up 15ft (4.5m),” she said.
“I’m helped by a very strapping, hunky trapeze artist and we do several movements including one called The Bird, and one where I have to hang by my feet.”
Kerri-Anne Kennerley plays the role of Berthe during a rehearsal of Pippin at Lyric Theatre, Star City on October 26. Credit: Don Arnold/WireImage
Footage has emerged of just that very moment - when Kennerley is suspended upside down before falling.
The video footage shows the moment Kennerley falls and people rush on stage to help her.
Two months ago Kennerley posted a video to Instagram of her learning to use the trapeze.
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“Told you I wanted to join the circus!”, she wrote.
Sunrise host Samantha Armytage has shared a stunning photo from her romantic New Year’s Eve wedding to millionaire businessman Richard Lavender.
Sam, 44, and the equestrian entrepreneur, 61, tied the knot on New Year’s Eve at his 40-hectare property in Bowral on the NSW Southern Highlands.
For the low-key last-minute ceremony, Sam wore a fitted white knee-length, long-sleeved Carla Zampatti gown, carried white roses and her blonde hair was tied up with a white ribbon by hair and make-up artist Rose Saffioti.
Lavender wore a matching white rose on the lapel of his charcoal suit.
After exchanging vows at Lavender Equestrian just before midday on Thursday, the newlyweds and their families travelled a short distance to nearby winery, Centennial Vineyards, for a sit-down lunch.
To ward off the cooler Bowral weather, Sam wore a navy blazer over her dress.
Reuben Schoots sits barely visible behind a wall of antique clocks — heavy longcase pendulum pieces, ornate French marble clocks adorned with baroque sculptures and naked timepieces without cases or dials, their movements exposed.
None of the clocks are ticking.
The 27-year-old works in silence because he is working by hand, at a scale of microns, on the pieces of a mechanical watch he began two-and-a-half years ago.
When he made its first part, he knew almost nothing about horology, the study of timekeeping.
It was an arcane craft he had just begun to delve into, after becoming seriously ill.
Once an athletic man working as a barista and studying nutrition at university, Reuben became sick from an unknown illness he contracted during an eight-month backpacking journey through Latin America.
Reuben caught several illnesses backpacking through Latin America as a 22-year-old.(Supplied: Reuben Schoots)
"I went to the doctor and they found I had glandular fever, but the glandular fever was actually the result of my immune system being so suppressed as I had contracted three tropical viruses, as well as a parasite I had in my gut," Reuben said.
"I became really unwell, I lost 16 kilos, I couldn't leave the bed, I had this huge mental depression as well as this physical depression."
Rarely able to leave his bed or his home, Reuben lost his job, his sporting ability, and ultimately quit his studies.
He also became addicted to the opiates he was prescribed to treat his chronic pain.
Then something unusual on the wrist of a friend caught Reuben's eye.
"It was a mechanical watch, and you could see the movement through the back of the watch … and I remember seeing that movement and just thinking 'wow, who makes this? How does this work? There's hundreds of components all ticking away, working together to tell you the time'."
"I really wanted to be doing something with my hands, making, but I didn't realise that's what I wanted to do until I actually became sick and everything that I was doing or had was stripped away."
Reuben was inspired by the fine movements of a mechanical timepiece.(ABC News: Jake Evans)
Rediscovering a relic of time
But you cannot just start making a watch with 200-year-old techniques on the fly.
There are no online tutorials or group classes for making a mechanical watch from scratch — even modern handmade watches are usually built by a team of up to 32 craftsmen, each with a specialisation in a particular part honed over a lifetime.
And the old books that could teach Reuben were intentionally obtuse.
His guide, a late master named George Daniels — famed for making complete watches by hand — would sometimes write a single instruction (like "make a flywheel") for a part that required more than 100 steps and three months of work to make.
Reuben had to make many of the tools to craft the watch himself, because they do not exist in Australia.(ABC News: Jake Evans)
The dexterity and focus required also means Reuben must test his body daily, pushing himself to his limits inside a sauna before swimming laps in an Olympic pool to condition himself.
Following the methods employed by Daniels, he is dedicated to initiating himself into an intimate fraternity.
"I know of two people that have completed a George Daniels watch outside of Daniels himself," Reuben said.
After 2,500 hours of work, Reuben has just two pieces left to make before his watch will finally tick.
Reuben's watch is made of hundreds of parts, many of which took months to make.(Instagram: reubenschoots)
"It's a strange thing for me to look at, for me to hold and to touch — of course it's very precious," he said.
"It embodies an incredible amount of, basically, perseverance. There's a lot of frustration, there's a lot of pain, there's a lot of mistakes. Some components I've made over 20 times before one works.
"You lose them, you drop them, they fly across the room."
Reuben wants to make a mark for Australia in the history of handmade watchmaking.
And there are collectors out there ready to buy a watch like his — Daniels' greatest watch sold at auction in 2019 for more than $6 million.
Though Reuben has learned more than just to make a watch in his thousands of hours of toil.
Reuben says the resilience he has developed watchmaking helps him outside the workshop, too.(ABC News: Jake Evans)
He has also built a tool to overcome the isolation, illness and loneliness he was plunged into — something he says many others could benefit from as they face the ongoing pandemic.
"I think that a lot of people are feeling very negative and don't like this isolation, or this time to yourself. Change hurts," he said.
"But they undervalue, or underestimate the value of, down time and I think people are scared to be with themselves. Evolution comes out of down time."
Eric Bana may be a city boy, but he feels the pull of the country.
Those country landscapes of regional Victoria, the craggy shapes of the bush and the open spaces of the tinder dry fields, are splashed all over the screen of bush noir The Dry, Bana’s latest film, adapted from Jane Harper’s best-selling novel.
The appeal of the film is as much about the vivid, moody sense of place it evokes as it is the mysterious deaths that drive the plot of the film.
Shot in the Mallee Wimmera region of northwest Victoria, it’s the stand-in for the fictional hometown of Bana’s character Aaron, a Melbourne-based federal cop who returns home for the funeral of his childhood friend.
There are questions around the deaths and the tensions present in the stricken town – some long simmering, some brought on by the devastating drought – threaten to tear it apart.
“There is another version of this film that exists 50 minutes outside of a metropolitan area where you can cheat it and still make a great movie, but you wouldn’t see the movie that you’ll see,” Bana told news.com.au.
“I don’t like being indoors in a studio. Locations really bleed into your character, your performance and your energy. It’s really special.”
Bana, 52, said he was partly drawn to The Dry because of Harper’s depiction of regional Australia in her book.
“It’s the regional Australia that I recognise, not the outback. I really spend a lot of time out in the regional areas on my motorcycle, so a lot of these places are places I’ve spent a fair bit of time in and just love. I feel very passionate about it.
“So, I had a very emotional response to the material as a result.
“Then, obviously, when you’re embedded there [filming], you get into the rhythms of country life, even though you’re working. You’re remote and you’re having these beautiful one-hour-and-15-minute drives from the little town that you’re staying in, to the town that you’re shooting in each day, experiencing the sunrise and the sunset and the beauty of it. It gets under your skin.
“It was a major adjustment coming back to life in Melbourne after that, and lockdown was even harder as a result of having spent time in the region. I was dying to get back out there, into the regions.”
He was quick to add, “I behaved myself, I didn’t break any rules. But, boy, oh, boy, there was a couple of vanishing-point moments!”
Bana had filmed The Dry, directed by his good friend Robert Connelly, in early 2019, before the drought had broken. If there was one upside to that, it was those parched, brittle landscapes looked amazing on the big screen.
It’s a scale that is breathtaking on a cinema screen, an experience that can’t be replicated on a TV screen at home, let alone on your mobile phone.
The Dry, like so many films in 2020, was originally intended for release earlier, in its case in April. As the world locked down and cinemas shuttered, an August date was mooted before settling on January 1, traditionally a busy moviegoing time of the year which would usually be crowded with Hollywood blockbusters.
But with coronavirus cases escalating in large markets including the US and the UK and big movies further pushed, The Dry finds itself in an enviable position in that it’s only up against Wonder Woman 1984 in terms of a high-profile competitor.
“We now have this incredible opportunity on January to open at a time without there being 10 American blockbusters in the same week,” Bana said.
Also, as an Australian film, the decision to release it in cinemas now was not being made by executives in Los Angeles whose priorities are firmly focused on the US.
While the threat of a second wave in Greater Sydney has made audiences reticent to flock to a cinema, the rest of the country is open for business, and for moviegoing.
Even though most international tentpole movies have been withheld these past nine months, Australians have had the fortune to sample smaller, independent fare but also a smattering of local films.
These local releases during the pandemic, including Rams, Babyteeth and the upcoming Penguin Bloom, have been a reminder why it’s so important that there is a robust Australian screen culture.
“I think by about halfway through 2021, there is a pretty impressive runway of Australian films that’s being released and we’re the first of them,” Bana said. “It’s why I really hope for many reasons our film is a huge success. I hope it paves a way to help with those other releases.
“I’m hoping that the industry will look back on itself and say, ‘hey, Australian audiences really warm to these projects’. They’re original pieces of material of really high quality that have a broad audience in mind.
“Let’s see if people flock to them and if they do, there’s a reassessment [of the local industry] hopefully.”
Up-and-comer actor Joe Klocek, who plays a younger version of Bana’s character Aaron in The Dry, agreed that the pandemic has highlighted the value of the local screen industry.
“One thing we’ve learnt from the pandemic is that Australia can hold its own. We’re creating a lot of great work,” Klocek said.
“And I think the pandemic has actually made the rest of the world realise that we are an invaluable asset to have. That’s one thing I’m really excited about when The Dry comes out. I hope people get to cinemas and see it because it just says, ‘This is what we can do, look at this’.”
Bana added the allure of Harper’s book will hopefully prove to be a selling point for moviegoers in supporting a local production.
“We always thought that there could be a massive audience for Jane Harper’s book. It was our job to try and make the biggest cinematic version to try and lure people into the cinema.
“Every decision made on that film is made with a big screen in mind, right down to the sound and everything. That’s what we want to be part of.”
Perusing a bookshelf can feel a tad voyeuristic; what's made the cut and how books are arranged can tell you about a person's tastes, values and even their psyche.
What about the bookshelves of great writers? What can they tell us about acclaimed authors and their works?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh — co-hosts of RN's The Bookshelf — are obsessed with knowing what's on the bookshelves of the best novelists.
They've been asking writers about the books that have shaped them since their show began in 2018.
"What we found was the surprise, delight and sheer eclecticism of reading lives," says Evans.
"The crime writer who was shaped by science fiction, the literary author who discovered plot through detective novels, the romantic who thrilled to hardboiled noir.
"Every book is begat by other books; every reader holds a library."
So let's rifle through those bookshelves.
Bernadine Evaristo
Bernardine Evaristo shared the 2019 Booker Prize with Margaret Atwood.(Supplied: Jennie Scott)
English writer Bernadine Evaristo won the 2019 Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other — which is about the lives of 12 characters, mostly Black women, over many generations.
Evaristo says that one inspiration for the multi-narrator novel was For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf by African American writer Ntozake Shange, which she saw on stage in 1979.
"It was the first time that I'd seen a play, or as she called it 'choreopoetry', just about black women," says Evaristo.
She says one book that's on the bookshelf that made her is The Bone People by novelist, poet and short-story-writer of Maori ancestry Keri Hulme, who in 1985 became the first New Zealander to win the Booker.
"That book was very important to me when I was coming of age as a writer, and trying to find stories and forms that would help me feel that I could be part of the literary world," Evaristo says.
Evaristo says those possibilities were in both subject and form: one of the novel's protagonists is an eccentric Maori woman, and Hulme's book is both fragmentary and poetic.
Melissa Lucashenko
Lucashenko started reading before she’d started school, devouring British children’s books by Enid Blyton and C.S. Lewis at her local library.(ABC Arts: Daniel Boud)
Lucashenko started reading early, but says that Hulme's novel, which she read in her early 20s, was "the first book that I truly felt connected to in a really deep way".
"It was a groundbreaking book in lots of ways: it centred an Indigenous woman and her experience, it's postmodern in that it flips between voices a lot ... and it is actually the story of a queer family."
Hulme's book also incorporates Maori language, an influence on Lucashenko, who weaved Bundjalung-Yugambeh language into her acclaimed 2013 novel Mullumbimby.
Lucashenko says Bruce Pascoe's 2001 novel Earth was also integral to this element of her writing.
"[He introduces the reader to the Wathaurong language] a little bit in chapter one and then a little bit more in chapter two until by the end of the book, you understand so much ... It's just remarkable," she says.
Lucashenko says that storytelling, particularly stories she heard in Aboriginal communities in Queensland and New South Wales, sits behind her writing as much as books do.
"It's maybe not intentional storytelling, but do you know the concept of the 'found poem'? Well, I wander around and I think I encounter the 'found story'."
Tayari Jones
Jones says Song of Solomon is "maybe the greatest American novel ever".(Supplied: Nina Subin)
American novelist Tayari Jones is best known for her fourth novel An American Marriage, which won a 2018 NAACP Image Award and was an Oprah Book Club selection.
Her bookshelf includes literary legend Toni Morrison and her 1977 novel Song of Solomon, which follows an African American man on a journey to explore his family history.
"The thing about Morrison that makes her such a genius is that she can take the lives of ordinary people and raise them all the way up to the level of mythology," Jones says.
Jones says Nigerian author Chinua Achebe's 1958 debut novel Things Fall Apart, which she read while living in Nigeria, was an emotional page-turner that helped her engage with and understand colonialism.
"It changed my understanding of world history and even understanding the soil on which I stood."
Charlotte's Web by E. B. White was the first book that Jones read, and she says even to this day when she's nervous she repeats to herself the words that Charlotte spins in her web to save Wilbur the pig: "Some pig, terrific, radiant, humble."
"As a writer, I think it's important to remember how I learned to love reading in the first place," she says.
Heather Rose
Heather Rose recommends Yuval Noah Harari's books Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.(Supplied: Allen and Unwin)
Tasmanian author Heather Rose won the 2016 Stella Prize for The Museum of Modern Love; her latest, critically acclaimed novel is the political satire Bruny.
When Rose was six years old, her father picked out the first book she ever borrowed from the adult section of the library: Ernest Hemingway's short 1952 novel The Old Man and the Sea.
"It's the first time a book broke my heart ... and I remember thinking 'Wow, a book doesn't just take you places, it makes you feel things', and I thought at the time, I want to be a writer like that," she says.
Alongside this Hemingway book, Rose says her bookshelf would have to include two Virginia Woolf books that she regularly revisits: To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway.
"I love the way she [Woolf] stretches language in a way that is bold and brave — as if she's considered the literary canon and made it entirely her own."
Rose says she's recently been shaped by the work of Israeli philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, but that her bookshelf wouldn't be complete without works by Margaret Atwood.
"What I've loved about Margaret Atwood is that she writes something different every time."
Michael Connelly
Coneolly was influenced by Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays and Ragtime by EL Doctorow.(Supplied: Mark DeLong Photography)
Best-selling and award-winning American crime writer Michael Connelly, whose latest novel is The Law of Innocence, is a voracious reader of literary Los Angeles, his home and the setting of many of his books.
"I became a writer largely because of the works of Raymond Chandler," says Connelly.
Every year before he begins writing a book, he rereads chapter 13 of Chandler's 1949 novel The Little Sister, a self-contained episode where private investigator Philip Marlowe drives around LA.
"It still captures the essence of Los Angeles. So he achieved, to me, a rare level of art ... that still inspires me every time I try to do my own take on Los Angeles."
Connelly says American postmodern novelist and satirist Kurt Vonnegut was a key author on his teenage bookshelf.
"It was just [because of the] unbounded imagination in his books and at the same time, his books had a message."
Connelly's 1996 novel The Poet is filled with allusions to macabre short story writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe.
"I hope I write them [books] where you feel like you've just got to check over your shoulder, just make sure there's no one behind you. And I think that was something that Poe was great at."
Jennifer Egan
"[The House of Mirth] is a really emotionally gripping book that every time I read, it makes me cry hard," says Egan.(Supplied: Hachette/Peter M. Van Hattem)
American writer Jennifer Egan won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for A Visit from the Goon Squad, and she says the bookshelf that made her would have to include Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel about the lives of African Americans in the 40s, Invisible Man.
"I feel like Ellison took the tools of modernism — which basically was about trying to use language to more accurately map consciousness — and took it a step further and used it to map exclusion."
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, a 1905 novel about an impoverished socialite in New York City's high society, is also on Egan's bookshelf.
The historical backdrop of Egan's critically acclaimed 2018 novel Manhattan Beach is the Depression and World War II, and Egan says Don DeLillo's weighty 1997 tome Underworld, about the Cold War and its aftermath, is another of her formative reads.
"Sometimes fiction can tell me more than non-fiction about what it was like to be alive at a certain time ... In reading Underworld, I got a sense of the textures of Cold War life all over America."
Andrew O'Hagan
O'Hagan says The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson would be on the bookshelf that made him.(Supplied: Allen and Unwin)
Don DeLillo also appears on the foundational bookshelf of Booker-nominated Scottish writer Andrew O'Hagan.
But O'Hagan — whose latest novel Mayflies' first half is filled with the sounds, sights and politics of 80s UK — was influenced by DeLillo's Libra, a 1998 novelistic telling of the Kennedy assassination.
"It takes the whole culture in ... the musical landscape, television, newsreels, cinema, mystery stories, the whole beat of America at that time, has been worked into that book, and that's a real inspiration for me," says O'Hagan.
Another formative book for the novelist is Norma Jean, a 1959 biography of Marilyn Monroe by Fred Lawrence Guiles, which he picked up at age 12, by chance, at a hairdresser.
"I was absolutely lost in the story. And it taught me something about writing, which is about ... somehow creating a little piece of model arithmetic on the page, where they [the reader] can put themselves in place of the characters and see their own lives afresh."
What rounds out O'Hagan's bookshelf? He says it has to have Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, as well as the novels of Graham Greene and Truman Capote.
"[Those books] just seemed to show a sense of what was possible as a writer."
The veteran TV star’s management has released an X-ray of her broken collarbone, sustained after the 67-year-old fell almost five metres on Wednesday night.
Watch the moment Kerri-Anne falls in the video above
Kennerley plays the role of Grandma Berthe in the Australian season of the hit musical, which recently started its string of shows at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre.
An X-ray of Kerri-Anne Kennerley's broken collarbone. Credit: Supplied
The Aussie icon had previously spoken about the physical demands of the show.
“In my big number, I have to get on a trapeze and go up 15ft (4.5m),” she said.
“I’m helped by a very strapping, hunky trapeze artist and we do several movements including one called The Bird, and one where I have to hang by my feet.”
Kerri-Anne Kennerley plays the role of Berthe during a rehearsal of Pippin at Lyric Theatre, Star City on October 26. Credit: Don Arnold/WireImage
Footage has emerged of just that very moment - when Kennerley is suspended upside down before falling.
The video footage shows the moment Kennerley falls and people rush on stage to help her.
Two months ago Kennerley posted a video to Instagram of her learning to use the trapeze.
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“Told you I wanted to join the circus!”, she wrote.
The veteran TV star’s management has released an X-ray of her broken collarbone, sustained after the 67-year-old fell almost five metres on Wednesday night.
Watch the moment Kerri-Anne falls in the video above
Kennerley plays the role of Grandma Berthe in the Australian season of the hit musical, which recently started its string of shows at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre.
An X-ray of Kerri-Anne Kennerley's broken collarbone. Credit: Supplied
The Aussie icon had previously spoken about the physical demands of the show.
“In my big number, I have to get on a trapeze and go up 15ft (4.5m),” she said.
“I’m helped by a very strapping, hunky trapeze artist and we do several movements including one called The Bird, and one where I have to hang by my feet.”
Kerri-Anne Kennerley plays the role of Berthe during a rehearsal of Pippin at Lyric Theatre, Star City on October 26. Credit: Don Arnold/WireImage
Footage has emerged of just that very moment - when Kennerley is suspended upside down before falling.
The video footage shows the moment Kennerley falls and people rush on stage to help her.
Two months ago Kennerley posted a video to Instagram of her learning to use the trapeze.
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“Told you I wanted to join the circus!”, she wrote.
A UK male model is one of several people who have alleged that fashion designer Alexander Wang sexually assaulted them.
Owen Mooney, from Peterborough, claims he was at a packed nightclub in New York City in 2017 when Wang allegedly groped him making him “freeze in shock”.
In a video uploaded to TikTok, Mr Mooney said: “I was by myself at one point and this guy next to me obviously took advantage of the fact that no one could f***ing move.”
The model said Wang, 37, “just started touching me up, like, fully up my leg, in my crotch. It made me freeze completely me because I was in so much shock”.
He continued: “And then I look to my left to see who it was and it was a really famous fashion designer and I just couldn’t believe that he was doing that to me.”
In a follow-up video also posted to TikTok, Mr Mooney said that the Chinese-American designer needs to be “exposed” and “cancelled”.
Entertainment veteran Kerri-Anne Kennerley has suffered a broken collarbone after falling from a trapeze at Sydney's Lyric Theatre on Wednesday evening.
The former Studio 10 co-host was performing in the Tony Award-winning musical Pippin when she fell around four metres onto the stage.
Kerri-Anne Kennerley with Pippin lead Ainsley Melham.
Producers said Ms Kennerly finished her song and was taken to hospital. Scans revealed that in addition to a broken collarbone the TV star had sustained a chip to a bone in her ankle.
In a statement, Ms Kennerley said the show had been "one of the great experiences" of her life and she was thankful for everyone's support.
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"What happened is just a random misstep in the trapeze and circus world," she said. "I've always felt safe in their hands but accidents just happen."
Earlier this year, Ms Kennerley said she was excited to play Berthe in Pippin as it would involve the challenge of singing upside down. Berthe is a supporting character who is described as a "saucy grandmother".
The TV star has been a familiar face in Australia's entertainment industry for more than four decades. In the 1980s and '90s she hosted Network Ten's Good Morning Australia program. She has been inducted into the Logie Hall of Fame, appeared on Australia Post stamps and even released a Christmas album.
More recently, she was the host of Ten's morning talk show Studio 10. She and several other presenters, such as Joe Hildebrand, left in September during a round of cost-cutting.
Pippin is slated to run until the end of January 2021. Ms Kennerley will be replaced by understudies until further notice, the first of which will be performer Angelique Cassimatis. Broken collarbones can take several weeks to heal depending on the severity of the injury.
The Lyric Theatre has been adhering to strict audience limits during Pippin's run due to COVID-19. Attendees are required to wear masks, register via a QR code and practise social distancing.
Broede Carmody is a culture reporter at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
