Home Truths: David Williamson turns the spotlight on himself

At the age of 79, playwright David Williamson finally written an unflinching memoir. What does he want to get off his chest?

Complicated: David Williamson. Picture: Justine Walpole

Twenty years ago a publisher approached the great playwright David Williamson to ask whether he would write a memoir. “I refused on the grounds that other people’s lives were more interesting than mine,’’ he says. But in January last year he reconsidered and his rollicking autobiography Home Truths will be eagerly scrutinised by those who have worked with Williamson across 56 plays and a number of screenplays and television miniseries.

As journalist Matthew Condon writes in this issue’s cover story, through a glittering career Williamson has sometimes come across as aloof, opinionated and unafraid to call out his critics. He confronts this head on: “The memoir has allowed me to write about the plethora of odd, interesting, brilliant and decent people with whom my life has brought me into contact, as well as the vipers who have done their best to make my life hell and often succeeded.”