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Plain text size Larger text size Text size is very large Spending an afternoon with writer-director John Michael McDonagh and his editor-producer partner Lizzie Eves, you learn a few things. First, they’re great friends, his down-to-earth Aussie no-bullshit vibe is the perfect foil for his London bluff. Second, they’re big fans of drinking days. I met the couple in Sydney’s Verona cinema foyer, the day before they flew back to London after their annual visit to Australia (they spend three months here each year, mostly on the Sunshine Coast, where Eves has family). Over a beer, McDonagh told me that while they were editing their new film Forgivable at home during lockdown, “we’ll start drinking in the middle of the day and then we’ll start arguing”. “The cat’s coming around three o’clock,” Eves said, sipping a glass of white wine. “We would scream at each other and the cat would scream at us and we would scream at the...

Load Later, Dawes became the inspiration for Kate Grenville astronomer Daniel Rooke di Lieutenant (2008), before appearing as herself, instructs Elizabeth Macarthur in stargazing, at Room Made of Leaves (2020). And at Ashley Hay’s Body in the Cloud (2010), Dawes is one of three characters united by their attraction to stars. Others are 1930s bridge workers and modern bankers. Dawes described Sydney Harbor as having “a few tricks” to its appearance, “like the inside of a telescope”. Despite being separated by time, all three miraculously see the same fallen man. It’s surprising how often astronomy appears in fiction about death. In the work of Kathleen Watson Broken Dream House (1908), astronomer Eric was the only child of a single mother. His career epitomizes his lofty ideals, but his obsession with heroism has devastating consequences. D’Arcy Niland writes about a girl who learns to live without her father at Call Me When The Cros...