Cyril Alston Pearl (11 April 1904 – 3 March 1987) was an Australian

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

, editor, author,

social historian Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

, wit and television personality.

Life and career

He was born in the

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

suburb of

Fitzroy, Victoria Fitzroy is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, north-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Yarra local government area. Fitzroy recorded a population of 10,431 at the 2021 census. Pl ...

on 11 April 1904, to Jewish gem-dealer, Joseph Pearl, and his wife Goldy, both immigrants from Britain. He was educated at

Scotch College, Melbourne (For God, for Country, and for Learning) , established = , type = Independent, day and boarding , gender = Boys , denomination = Presbyterian , slogan = , ...

, and Hale College, in

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

, after the family moved to

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. Cyril returned to Victoria to attended the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

, where he studied philosophy and Russian, leaving without a degree. During his first year at university he became co-editor of the student newspaper ''Farrago''. He established the literary monthly, ''Stream'', in 1931, which lasted only three issues. He also founded Transition Press, with artist Irma Janetzki, whom he married in 1934. His career in journalism began in 1933 when he joined the staff of the ''Star'' newspaper in Melbourne. He had become an accomplished reporter, writer and sub-editor by the time it closed three years later. Together with other former ''Star'' journalists, he travelled north to Sydney where he joined Sir

Frank Packer Sir Douglas Frank Hewson Packer (3 December 19061 May 1974), was an Australian media proprietor who controlled Australian Consolidated Press and the Nine Network. He was a patriarch of the Packer family. Early life Frank Packer was born in K ...

's ''Daily Telegraph'', and was soon made features editor. Packer made him editor of ''The Sunday Telegraph'', and, by 1948, his duties included editorship of a new monthly magazine, ''A.M.''. He left ''The Daily Telegraph'' in 1950, and resigned from Consolidated Press entirely in 1953, and moved back to Melbourne. There he became a

freelance ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...

writer, producing hundreds of articles, columns and reviews for magazines and newspapers, including ''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...

'', ''

Nation A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group of people understood as defined by those ...

'', ''

Nation Review ''Nation Review'' was an Australian Sunday newspaper, which ceased publication in 1981. It was launched in 1972 after independent publisher Gordon Barton bought out Tom Fitzgerald's ''Nation'' publication and merged it with his own ''Sunday Revi ...

'' and the ''Weekend Australian''. He also wrote books, more than twenty of them, in the last three decades of his life. He had a special interest in social history, biography and politics, and research for these works sometimes took him overseas. His book ''Wild Men of Sydney'', exposing corruption in colonial Sydney, was published in 1958. As an editor he published many great Australian writers, including

Lennie Lower Leonard "Lennie" Waldemar Lower (24 September 1903 – 19 July 1947) was an Australian humorist who is still considered by many to be the comic genius of Australian journalism. Life and career Lower was born in Dubbo, New South Wales. His fathe ...

. He made a brief return to journalism after

Rupert Murdoch Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...

persuaded him to become editor of ''The Sunday Mirror'' in Sydney in 1960. An accomplished raconteur and humorist, he appeared in television panel shows, such as ''

Any Questions ''Any Questions?'' is a British topical discussion programme "in which a panel of personalities from the worlds of politics, media, and elsewhere are posed questions by the audience". It is typically broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Fridays at 8 ...

'', and, '' Would you Believe?'', in the 1960s and 1970s. A sociable man, his literary friends included

Clive Turnbull Stanley Clive Perry Turnbull (22 December 1906 – 25 May 1975) was an Australian writer and journalist. He was born in Glenorchy in Tasmania. He joined '' The Mercury'' newspaper as a reporter in 1922 and then moved to Melbourne where he worke ...

, Richard Hughes,

Clem Christesen Clement Byrne Christesen (28 October 1911 – 28 June 2003) was the founder of the Australian literary magazine ''Meanjin''. He served as the magazine's editor from 1940 until 1974. Biography Early years Clement Byrne Christesen was born and sp ...

, Peter Ryan,

Alan Moorehead Alan McCrae Moorehead, (22 July 1910 – 29 September 1983) was a war correspondent and author of popular histories, most notably two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile, ''The White Nile'' (1960) and ''The Blue Nile'' (196 ...

and

Chester Wilmot Reginald William Winchester Wilmot (21 June 1911 – 10 January 1954) was an Australian war correspondent who reported for the BBC and the ABC during the Second World War. After the war he continued to work as a broadcast reporter, and wr ...

.Ryan, pp. 5–23. His wife, Irma, died in 1962. In 1965, he married Patricia Donohoe in Sydney. Pearl died in 1987, survived by his second wife, and the younger of his two sons.

Books by Cyril Pearl

* ''Our Yesterdays'' (1954) * ''The Girl with the Swansdown Seat'' (1955) * ''Wild Men of Sydney'' (1958) * ''Bawdy Burns: The Christian Rebel'' (1958) * ''So, You Want to be an Australian'' (1959) * ''Always Morning: The Life of Richard Henry "Orion" Horne'' (1960) * ''So, You Want to Buy a House ... and Live in It'' (1961) * ''ANZAC Newsreel: A Picture History of Gallipoli'' (1963) * ''The Best of Lennie Lower'' (1963) (editor) * ''Pantaloons and Antics; or, Doodling with a Hermes'' (1964) * ''Morrison of Peking'' (1967) * ''Beer, Glorious Beer: With Incidental Observations ...'' (1969) * ''Dublin in Bloomtime: The City James Joyce Knew'' (1969) * ''Rebel Down Under: When the "Shenandoah" Shook Melbourne, 1865'' (1970) * ''Hardy Wilson and His Old Colonial Architecture'' (1970) * ''Sydney Revels'' (1970) * ''The Victorian Era, 1850–1900'' (1971) * ''Brilliant Dan Deniehy: A Forgotten Genius'' (1972) * ''Victorian Patchwork'' (1972) * ''Five Men Vanished: The Bermagui Mystery'' (1978) * ''The Three Lives of Gavan Duffy'' (1979) * ''The Dunera Scandal: Deported by Mistake'' (1983) * ''Limericks Down Under'' (1985) (co-editor with Alan Benjamin)

References

Sources

* * William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton & Barry Andrews, (1986) ''The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature'', Oxford University Press, Melbourne, p. 551.

External links

* Patrick Buckridge
"Pearl, Cyril Altson (1904–1987)"
''

Australian Dictionary of Biography The ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'' (ADB or AuDB) is a national co-operative enterprise founded and maintained by the Australian National University (ANU) to produce authoritative biographical articles on eminent people in Australia's ...

''
Cyril Pearl: The Australian Media Hall of Fame

Cyril Pearl interviewed by Hazel de Berg for the Hazel de Berg collection
(sound recording), 1968 at

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

)
Cyril Pearl interviewed by Ian Hamilton
(sound recording), 1982 at National Library of Australia
Papers of Cyril and Paddy Pearl, 1853-2009
at

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pearl, Cyril 1904 births 1987 deaths Writers from Melbourne People educated at Scotch College, Melbourne People educated at Hale School 20th-century Australian male writers 20th-century Australian journalists Writers from Sydney Australian television personalities Jewish Australian writers Australian newspaper editors 20th-century Australian historians