Love & Fury (ATOM Study Guide)

Love and Fury concerns the life and works of two remarkable Australians: Judith Wright and HC 'Nugget' Coombs. Their clandestine relationship over twenty-five years has been one of the best-kept secrets in Australian literary and political public life. The story of their meeting, their love and their shared passions provides unique insights into the dreams and disappointments of a generation

Judith Wright (1915–2000), among Australia's foremost literary figures – poet, essayist, activist – dedicated herself to writing and fighting for a more humane Australia. Her passion was the land and the first Australians. She was often furious about what she saw as the betrayal of both.

Nugget Coombs (1906–1997), the economist, policy intellectual and advisor to governments at the highest level from Curtin to Whitlam and beyond, devoted the last decades of his life to the most rigorous commitment to Indigenous Australia.

They each had enormous ambitions for Australian culture and society; their meeting in the early 1970s – Nugget was sixty-six and Judith fifty-seven – was at a time of great optimism, when their shared ambitions for a new kind of Australia seemed achievable. This is a story of two people whose love, work and knowledge have much to tell us still.

Curriculum links

The curriculum areas that this film could be related to include:

• English
• History
• Politics