Tucked away in his “colonial cottage” at Beaconsfield, author and historian Stephen Dando-Collins spends most of his days writing in his classically designed and decorated study.
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Complete volumes of Orwell, Hemingway and Joyce adorn his walls, and a thick Oxford dictionary sits open at his desk.
He often ends his days by drinking a gin under his enormous oak tree.
It’s the type of lifestyle most writers could only dream, and comes off the back of no less than 40 published works and international acclaim.
From his converted nunnery in the Tamar Valley his works are sent to his literary agent in New York, who helps him find publishing houses to print his work around the world.
His most popular titles have revolved around the Roman Empire and the complexities of antiquity.
He also saw great success in 2012 with Crack Hardy - the true story of three brothers fighting in World War I.
The book was especially personal for Dando-Collins as the Searle brothers were his great-uncles.
His latest title, Mr Showbiz, is starkly different from his usual range of topics.
The work focusses on the life and career of Australian publicist, talent manager, record producer and entrepreneur Robert Stigwood.
His wife, Louise, suggested he profile another internationally successful Australian, after his biography of writer Paul Brickhill.
Louise’s input into his work has been a common thread throughout his distinguished career.
“My publishing program is dictated by three hurdles,” he explained.
“The first hurdle is my wife – I have to convince her it's a good idea.
“Then if Louise is on board, there is my literary agent and then a publisher.”
His wife, a writer in her own regard, has even been known to help Dando-Collins write the odd chapter.
After submitting a final draft of a historical novel, his literary agent persuaded him to add in a rape scene to the piece.
“I said, ‘well I've never raped anybody, I can't write from experience!’,” he exclaimed.
“Louise and I talked about it and agreed, so we sat down together and wrote the rape scene together.
“It was like writing Mills and Boone – laughing down your sleeve at the time.”
Many would never have heard of Dando-Collins’ latest subject, but everyone has heard of the acts Stigwood helped propel to fame – Eric Clapton, the BeeGees and John Travolta chief among them.
“Stigwood had great vision and could pick great talent,” Dando-Collins said.
“He also had implicit faith in his acts - he would stick by them for years.
“These days, in the Youtube generation, if you don't strike it with your first effort you're discarded.”
When considering the popular view of show business-types as fickle, sycophantic and greedy, the idea of a loyal publicist is rather refreshing.
A sterling example of Stigwood’s commitment to his acts is the generosity he displayed towards a young, struggling BeeGees outfit.
“Stigwood spent £50,000 of his own money promoting the BeeGees one year,” Dando-Collins said.
“This was at a time when £2500 was the average cost of a house in Britain.”
Stigwood hit pay dirt when he produced British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical Jesus Christ Superstar.
“Someone once said, 'Stigwood didn't think big, he thought massive',” Dando-Collins explained.
“In 1971, he convinced Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to do Jesus Christ Superstar and do it on Broadway.
“Stigwood made it the biggest launch Broadway had ever seen.”
While penning Mr Showbiz, Dando-Collins often compared stages of his own life with Stigwood’s.
When Stigwood was at the top of his game, Dando-Collins was experiencing the fruits of the social revolution that had crashed upon the Western world.
There was the sexual revolution, the music revolution, the fashion revolution – you could wear whatever you like, say whatever you like and do whatever you like.
- Stephen Dando-Collins
However, Dando-Collins admits himself that he was no Clapton.
“There are pictures of me in the sixties when I was working advertising in Hobart, and I was wearing a purple suit and my hair was down to below my shoulders,” Dando-Collins recalled.
“In 1966, when Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce walked into Stigwood's office in London to form Cream, I was a drummer in a band playing gigs around Hobart.
“I never had ambitions to be a rock star, but someone said 'If you get in a band you'll get girls'.
“It wasn't necessarily true.”
Despite his dearth of luck in the romance department, Dando-Collins still speaks of the era with a sparkle in his eye.
“The doors had opened to everything,” he recalled.
“There was the sexual revolution, the music revolution, the fashion revolution – you could wear whatever you like, say whatever you like and do whatever you like.
“In fact, there were things that were done in those days that would raise eyebrows today.”
Dando-Collins believes that many of the major differences between the current age and the era of his youth revolve around the prominence of social media in our lives.
He derides the “era of the troll”, and considers the prominence of social media as having an adverse influence on our social interactions and attention spans.
“Each era has its poison - it was drugs in the sixties and seventies. A lot of people died young.
“The poison of our current era is i think the black side of social media.”
The writer’s eternal plight to get noticed by a publishing house has also become much more difficult, according to him.
“With the explosion of e-books and self-publishing, it's far easier to get a book published or produced than ever before, but it's very hard to be a success and get published by the bigger publishers.
“What it's done is create a lot more competition and it's convinced two-thirds of the population to think they can write a book.”
While Dando-Collins doesn’t have any difficulty getting his works published, it does cast doubt on the ability of the next generation of writers to live and work in their own colonial cottage.
Mr Showbiz by Stephen Dando Collins is published by Penguin Random House. RRP $34.55.