Fiona Kells

With a foreword by eminent Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey, Richard Lane's diaries are an important document for the history of rural Australia and global publishing. Richard Lane was one of three brothers who founded Penguin Books in 1935. But like all great stories, his life didn't start there. After sailing to Adelaide in 1922, Richard began work as a boy...

Around the world, the big department stores of the 1920s to the 1950s wielded great power in dictating national tastes and fashions; a visit to any of these stores was an event in itself and an important social outing. In Australia, Snow’s department store was a household name. Its leaders and their families could be seen as a commercial aristocracy...