Australian journalist Helen Hutcheon has always had a way with words and words have taken her away on incredible journeys during a 60-year career with Pe Cruises, Woman’s Day, the Australian Women’s Weekly, Vogue Living and Travelweek.
The reader travels with Helen from the fabulous ‘tent city’ near the ruins of Persepolis where the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire was celebrated, to Saigon during the Vietnam war when Woman’s Day played Santa to thousands of orphaned and refugee children, to ‘brown bagging’ in North Carolina and a bloodied ending in a search for the best curry in Fiji. Helen also introduces people like the Shah of Iran, Princess Grace of Monaco and Audrey Hepburn.
Away with Words evokes a long-gone era of journalism when writers bashed out stories on clapped-out typewriters using carbon paper to keep copies and photographers brought their film back from the other side of the world to process it in the office dark room.
