Richard Walsh (Australian publisher)
| Richard Walsh | |
|---|---|
| Born | John Richard Walsh 21 July 1941 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Occupation | Publisher, writer, company director |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Notable works |
Great Australian eulogies Executive material Ferretabilia: life and times of Nation Review No Holts barred |
Richard Walsh (born John Richard Walsh; born 21 July 1941) is an Australian publisher, editor, company director, media consultant, lecturer, broadcaster and journalist. For many years he ran the publishing and bookselling firm Angus & Robertson and later he headed the media company Australian Consolidated Press. In those roles was "one of the most dominant figures in Australian publishing from the early seventies".
Richard Walsh was educated at Barker College and the University of Sydney and graduated with degrees in arts and medicine. He never practised medicine, but instead became a copywriter at advertising firm J. Walter Thompson.
In 1963, while still a university student and editor of Sydney University's Honi Soit student magazine, Walsh co-founded and co-edited the satirical underground alternative OZ magazine. Together with co-editors Richard Neville and Martin Sharp, he was sentenced to prison for obscenity (the convictions were quashed on appeal).
Looking back in 2006 on his involvement with OZ, Walsh commented:
OZ was born in the bland, conservative world of the early ’60s. It was the Menzies era: Australia was white Anglo Saxon, culturally barren and very, very insular. The Queen, the church and the RSL ruled the day. If you did anything radical, you were a communist. To call for the White Australia policy to end was a betrayal of our boys killed by the Japanese. Like lots of young people, we wanted to take the place by the scruff of the neck and change it.
He also wrote scripts for the satirical television show The Mavis Bramston Show.
In 1968 Walsh became founding editor of POL, an important magazine of its era that has been described as "distinctively Australian, lively and intelligently sexy".
Walsh originally envisaged POL as "glossy, up-market women's magazine"..., something like Queen or Nova in Great Britain which had no counterparts in Australia at that time". He subtitled the first issue of magazine "The Australian Woman" but in subsequent issues he changed the subtitle to "The Monthly Magazine for Modern Australian Women", this change signalling "Walsh's wish to target women readers who were forward-looking at a time when he saw Australians breaking many of the bonds of conservatism."
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