by Mark Colvin
Melbourne University Press
Source:
https://scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2054494/journalist-mark-colvin-his-fathers-legacy-and-his-own Books
Journalist Mark Colvin on his father’s legacy and his own career
The British-Australian journalist recalls his progress from naif to foreign correspondent, plus his father’s life in espionage
The British-Australian journalist recalls his progress from naif to foreign correspondent, plus his father’s life in espionage
by Mark Colvin
Melbourne University Press
In 1972, Mark Colvin travelled, via Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Beijing, to meet his father in Ulan Bator. In a waiting room at a border train station, a PLA soldier, ostensibly practising his English, told him how the Chinese Air Force had shot down the plane of Mao Zedong’s deputy, Lin Biao (who was defecting to Moscow after a failed coup). Colvin, then a political naif, recounted the story to his father a couple of days later, only to see him react with fury that he’d missed the intelligence scoop of the year “by a whole 36 hours”. It was the first Chinese account of the circumstances of Lin’s death, and Colvin junior was meant to pass it on. Light and Shadow, while a memoir of Colvin’s career as a British-Australian journalist and broadcaster, also re-examines his father’s life as a spy, which dictated the family’s movements, including to Malaysia and Vietnam. Close but distant, father and son led lives not dissimilar. Colvin writes: “I think of the 1980s as a time when my father stopped fighting the cold war and I started covering it.”