It is heartening to see how well Glenn Murcutt has coped with the tragic loss of his talented son Nick earlier this year (‘Fathers & Sons’, October). Years back, while writing Touch This Earth Lightly, a book based on extensive interviews with Glenn from the early 1980s, I included his account of an incident concerning his father Sam’s two-month prison sentence in 1937 for the manslaughter of an indentured labourer. This enraged Glenn to the extent that his words on this matter were deleted along with other comments he deemed unsuitable. As a result I spent six months in the National Archives researching Arthur Murcutt’s career in New Guinea. This revealed a great many facts of which Glenn remains unaware, and this is plainly apparent in his interview with Peter Robb.

Philip Drew

Annandale, NSW