Happy weekend and welcome back to Five Great Reads, in which Imogen Dewey and I take turns scouring the length and breadth of the Guardian’s worldwide reporting … and sometimes end up right back where we started.
This week’s selection has a distinctly local flavour – by way of a legendary New York rapper, England’s most famous stadium, and Scotland’s questionable addition to the world of musical instruments. Read on, and if you have any thoughts on this week’s selection don’t be afraid to make a noise and make it clear.
1. Brisbane family man’s hidden past
***
Although it’s shocking to know that his life began with a terrible crime, his legacy is so much more than that. – William Leslie Arnold’s son
The Chicago man quoted above didn’t know his father as William Leslie Arnold but John Damon, who had told him he was an orphan. “Well, he was an orphan,” says Matthew Westover, a deputy marshal in Nebraska. “But he killed his parents, that’s why he was an orphan.”
Arnold murdered his parents as a teenager in 1958, escaped a Nebraska prison in 1967 – and was never heard from again. Until Westover started picking through the case and discovered Arnold had died in Brisbane in 2010.
Isn’t it ironic? Arnold – a dedicated musician and model inmate who would have qualified for early release – and his accomplice (who was captured within a year) made their escape through the window of the prison music room.
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
2. Back in the game
Not for GZA is the kung fu obsession of RZA, his fellow founding father of hip-hop heroes the Wu-Tang Clan. The man originally known as The Genius winds down with a more cerebral pursuit: chess.
Which is how he came to be hosting a speed chess tournament in Melbourne’s inner north when the rest of his bandmates had their feet up after their Australian tour had wrapped. Jo Khan was there for the slightly surreal scene. Said one of the organisers: “This whole thing is pretty wild.”
GZA on chess: “It’s a mind-worker … for strategy, critical thinking, planning two, three, four steps. I just love the game.”
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
3. Sam Kerr, striker supreme
There are sports writers and then there is Jonathan Liew. Only appropriate then that he turned his laser focus on Chelsea (and Matildas) striker Sam Kerr in the Women’s FA Cup final last weekend.
Like Kerr, Liew waited and waited for the contest’s pivotal moment – then he struck. Eight seconds of matchplay, 852 words of magical prose.
Notable quote: “Kerr is 29 years old, and has been around this sport long enough to know that the vast majority of the moments that make up her day do not matter. So she waits, priming and preparing herself for the handful of seconds that will define her.”
How long will it take to read: Two minutes.
4. Tracking Indigenous deaths in custody
When Lorena Allam joined Guardian Australia as Indigenous affairs editor in 2018, she wanted to cover the beat in a new way. “On deaths in custody we were just the nameless, faceless dead … there was no interest and yet it just ground on and on.”
Until that stage fellow reporter Calla Wahlquist had been trying to keep a list, but the question remained: “How many people have died since the 1991 royal commission?” So a team spent eight months trawling through inquests and media reports, striving to highlight human stories behind the statistics – and found that as of the Black Lives Matter protests of June 2020, the answer was 432.
Grim toll: The number now stands at 540. The Deaths Inside database will be updated again this year.
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
Further reading: Our Ten Years of Guardian Australia series details our biggest gets since May 2013.
5. How You’re The Voice revived John Farnham’s fortunes
Slamming car doors, synthesisers at every turn, a bagpipes solo – and its inspiration? An anti-nuclear rally. Not your typical ingredients for a chart-topper, but add John Farnham’s full-throated cry to the mix and you have an Australian pop anthem (despite what some of the commenters below the line might think).
Shaad D’Souza pulls some of the pieces together as a documentary charting Farnham’s 1986 comeback hits cinemas.
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
Further listening: Farnesy’s brief foray into 80s action movie soundtracks is often glossed over, so the hilariously brilliant (and workout-friendly) Blood Bros DJ mix is essential. And if you’ve ever wondered what You’re The Voice would sound like as a drum’n’bass banger …
Sign up
If you would like to receive these Five Great Reads to your email inbox every weekend, sign up here. And check out our weekly culture and lifestyle newsletter, Saved for Later, our twice-daily breaking news updates and all other Australian newsletters here.
