Walter Marsh: author and historian unearthing our fascinating SA stories

Walter Marsh completed his Honours thesis in 2013. A decade later, his first book Young Rupert: the making of the Murdoch Empire was published. Now, just two year after that, his second book The Butterfly Thief: adventure, empire, and Australia's greatest museum heist has just hit shelves.

As much a historian as a writer, Walter has our rich South Australian history to thank for inspiring both his books. “I love archives, and South Australia has some extraordinary material sitting in libraries, museums, and records offices that most of the world pays little attention to.”

Walter says, “The Butterfly Thief is, at face value, the story of a series of museum heists and the cast of collectors that intersected with it. But for me, it’s also a meditation on the legacies we inherit from the past, and how we reconcile the good and the bad.”

Alongside writing and making use of his alumni borrowing privileges to scour the Barr Smith’s rare books collections and archives, Walter has played in many bands – most recently as bassist in folk group Fair Maiden – and collaborates on projects with his photographer partner Sia Duff, whose photography work he says he first saw in a copy of On Dit years before they met. 

Walter shared some insights about his writing career with our alumni team – from his formative days publishing with the University’s infamous student magazine, On Dit, to his current reality as a two-time book author and contributor to The Guardian and In Daily.

Have you always had an interest in writing history?

My grandparents met in Ceduna as young teachers fresh out of Adelaide Teachers’ College on Kintore Avenue. They always encouraged my reading and writing, and by the time I started university I’d run into my grandfather at the Barr Smith Library happily making use of alumni borrowing privileges well into his eighties. I’d already decided to major in History, and when it came time to pick an Honours thesis topic I remembered they had a copy of The Stuart Case by former University of Adelaide history lecturer Ken Inglis – about a controversial murder case in Ceduna in the late 1950s that involved a young Rupert Murdoch and News Limited. It inspired not only my thesis, but a decade later my first book Young Rupert: the making of the Murdoch empire – by that time I was making heavy use of my own alumni borrowing privileges.

What do you remember of your university days?

Student media changed my life. Getting my words printed in On Dit, doing late night student radio shifts, and finding a place in the beautiful communities that surrounded them was inseparable from the stuff I learnt in class. Having the opportunity to make stuff and put it out into the world, to meet new people, listen deeply, speak thoughtfully, and occasionally fail publicly inform everything I do today. I’m still friends with many of the people I met there, who have gone on to amazing things – Casey Briggs just took over from Antony Green as the ABC’s Chief Elections Analyst.

"Student media changed my life."

On the academic front, I think it was in my second year that I had my first real introduction to the archive on a visit to Rare Books and Collections in the Barr Smith Library. It opened up a world of research that wasn’t in a book, wasn’t online, and had to be tracked down, pulled out of storage, and have every page turned – perhaps for the first time since it was deposited. I was hooked! Teachers like Phil Butterss, Gareth Pritchard, Vesna Drapač, Lisa Mansfield, Rob Foster and my Honours supervisor Paul Sendziuk were also great influences.

Have you faced many challenges in your writing career?

A year or so after graduating I landed a dream job at Rip It Up, the street press I used to collect as a kid. It was a great, formative time, but within a year of becoming online editor its parent company shut it down and made us all redundant. A few years later, I scored another dream job working at The Adelaide Review, which also folded within a few years thanks to the pandemic.

I wouldn’t trade any of those experiences, but it's driven home how disruption has become the norm in an industry that’s barely recognisable from the time I started studying. It’s what motivated me to freelance and start pitching to places like The Guardian, and start working towards getting my first book published.

I’ve often heard Humanities dismissed as not being ‘job ready’, but I think a lot of young people today are looking out at a workforce that, regardless of what they studied, is in a constant state of flux and precarity. 

"What my Humanities studies gave me are the tools, the confidence and the curiosity to make my own path; to dig deeper, to do the work that makes sense to you, that no one else – and certainly no algorithm – would think to do."

What’s most important about your work?

I’m drawn to telling stories from the past that speak to our current moment — Young Rupert is largely set in 1950s Adelaide, but this story of a young, brash, left-wing media heir who railed against a conservative, monopolistic media establishment seemed a prescient case study for the global empire he would later build (while transforming into all the things he once criticised). In this current era of norm-shattering, man-child disruptor-tycoons who wind up just as reactionary as the systems they’ve tried to replace, it also seemed fitting.

What have been the proudest moments of your life or career so far?

There have been a lot of special moments but walking into a London bookshop and seeing my work on a shelf was pretty wild. The moments of external validation – festivals, media coverage, meeting readers – are lovely, but I still get the biggest kick out of doing the work itself, when I’ve uncovered a story or put together some pieces that I know no one has done before. Or, sometimes, I’ll find a letter or a document in the archive that fits the puzzle perfectly, and it’s as if it’s been sitting there for decades, waiting for you to find it.

What’s next, now that your second book has just been released?

Writing a book usually involves countless hours sitting quietly in a library or archive, or tapping away at home on the computer, so I’m looking forward to pushing the book out into the world and unpacking the story at festivals and other events over the next few months – and talking to readers, which is the obvious endpoint of writing a book but still humbles and surprises me!

I have a few ideas but now that I know how all-consuming a book project can be – both for me and everyone around me – I’m going to wait to see which one grows on me. I’m still freelancing with The Guardian alongside some other work including as South Australian editor of InReview, the arts-focussed arm of Solstice Media (InDaily, CityMag, SA Life).

Find Walter's books on the website of his publisher, Scribe, or at your favourite local bookshop:

Read The Butterfly Thief  Read Young Rupert