Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.

Hello, and today I'm joined by an Australian writer who's managed the rare feat of huge

critical acclaim,

along with international bestseller status, Kate Grenville. Her novel, The Idea of Perfection,

won the Orange Prize, the Secret River, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and was shortlisted for

the man Booker, and her trilogy of novels on the white settlement of Australia in the late

18th and early 19th centuries have been discussed and debated

by many reading groups. They've also stirred up controversy in her homeland about the depiction

of the often turbulent relations between whites and Aborigines. Now she's turned directly to her own

family. One Life, My Mother's Story, retells the life history of her mother, Nance Russell.

Nance comes over with a quiet and moving determination that enables her to run her own business as a pharmacist,

build a home, and survive war, economic hardship, and a sometimes troubled family life,

against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Australia in the first half of the 20th century.

And before we begin our conversation, Kate, I'm going to ask you to read a section from

One Life where Nance, your mother, has just found out the results of her pharmacy exams.

The results were pinned up on boards in the quad in late December 1930.

At the top of the page, there was a note in red ink, X denotes female students.

The women were all miss, where the men just had their initials. She supposed the men who made

up the lists would say they were being polite, but she hated being singled out like that.

She'd passed. She wondered what would have happened if her parents

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