About the Author

Journalist and author, Francis Ravel Harvey was born 1930 in Sydney, New South Wales and began his career as a cadet newspaper journalist in 1947. He worked in the live theatre in Sydney, wrote scripts for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s popular series Tales of Many Lands, and founded his own monthly magazine Theatregoer. He was theatre critic for the Canberra Times in the 70s and published the first theatre yearbook for the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust.

He worked as an editor and writer for Horwitz Publications and Ure Smith, founding the first magazine in Australia on industrial design, Design Australia, for the Industrial Design Council of Australia.

Mr Harvey worked as a senior journalist with the departments of Health and Social Security in Canberra, editing the quarterly journal Health which he founded, and then transferred to Sydney as a Senior Project Officer for the Australia Council, editing the magazine Artforce and producing annual reports. He remained with the Australia Council for eight years, producing publications such as Ozarts, which he co-founded, and The Australia Council: what it is, and what it does. From 1981 he spent ten years as head of the Information and Publications Unit at Macquarie University, from which he retired in 1991. He is presently working on his autobiography, whilst editing a newsletter Score, which he initiated for the alumni of the Sydney Conservatorium High School. He holds a Masters degree in Literature and Public History at the University of Sydney.