Early Life
Flanagan was born in Longford, Tasmania, in 1961, the fifth of six children. He is descended from Irish convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land in the 1840s. His father is a survivor of the Burma Death Railway. One of his three brothers is Australian Rules football journalist Martin Flanagan. He grew up in the remote mining town of Rosebery on Tasmania's western coast.
Flanagan left school at the age of 16. He returned to study at the University of Tasmania, where he was president of the Student Union. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours. The following year, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship at Worcester College, Oxford, he was admitted to the degree of Master of Letters in History. Flanagan wrote four non-fiction works before moving to fiction, works he has called "his apprenticeship".
In the foreword to Flanagan's first book, A Terrible Beauty - History of the Gordon River Country (1985), Bob Brown wrote:
"Australia has not heard the last of the Tasmanian wilderness nor, I happily predict, has it heard the last of Richard Flanagan."
Read more about this topic: Richard Flanagan
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