Maxwell Edgar Fatchen, AM (3 August 1920 – 14 October 2012) was an Australian children’s writer and journalist. (Wikipedia)
Further, he was my maternal grandfather’s cousin. Grandma was always somewhat proud of this and keen on his writings, especially his regular column in the Adelaide Advertiser. She used to send me clippings, many of which I pasted into scrapbooks.
I’ve now photographed and scanned many of these as some form of record and tribute.
If you are new to Max’s writings, I recommend starting with Unacustard as I am…—it’s a pretty good intro to his style of humour.
I have tended, out of personal taste, to prefer his light-hearted prose pieces, but there are a few examples of his verses and a few of his more serious articles, these latter tagged “Saturday Spread” as that was usually the Advertiser column they were published under.
Enjoy…
Browse Max’s work
(full list of what’s on this site—see below the list for links to a couple of smaller subsets)
- Dancing with yesterday
- Diagnosis takes a head start
- Dispensing with money
- Don’t shoot me, I’m only the poor driver..
- Electronic mementos have it all taped
- Everything in the garden is risky
- Experts at turning a furrow now learn to turn a phrase
- Family drive for opulence
- Fangs for the memory
- Farewell lean and hungry friend
- Farewell Mr Fatchen
- Farewell to goodbyes
- Fatchen’s fecund offering
- Fattening the piggy banks
- Finding teaching’s real rewards
- Fine mess they’ve got us into
- Fishing for words a taxing chore
- Game enough for cosmic capers
- Giving the Swiss a miss
- Good old Transylvania
Tagged subsets of Max’s writings
If you just prefer a straightforward, non-paginated listing, it’s here (but it’s quite long!)