About this Book

The Artist in the Garden

Geoffrey Bingham has done it again with another one of those books which are typical of him. It is a mixture of puckish humour and commentary on the human scene and delight at life.

The problem for the reader is whether the stories are pure fiction or just auto-biographical incidents snatched from a most colourful life. Are we being entertained by a lively imagination or did these stories really happen? What of the teenager playing hooky from Sunday School, caught by the stunning sight of a cow calving? What of Fuzzy Wuzzy John—a black Burns Philp sailor—changed overnight from a womanising, foul-mouthed alcoholic to a joyful character with his ‘boys’ who evangelised the Sydney docks? These stories are just the beginning. There is a wide range of situations written by a man whose latest book but this one—Love Is the Spur—has caused quite a stir in his exposure of humanity at its worst and discovering humanity at its best.

In this book he is not the diplomatic apologist for the faith he has but, without pretence, displays the mind he has regarding man—men and women and children. His stories are not shallow but essays in depth. For a man who has taken turns at being a teenage poet and storyteller, a farmer, a soldier, prisoner of war, adult writer–poet, pastor, missionary, international speaker, and a kind of elder and unintentional winner of awards military and national, he is still speaking through his hundreds of books. An octogenarian, he is still talking to his generations, and will to those beyond his present life. A community of hearers is still growing.

The Writer—Geoffrey Bingham—He was recently honoured as a Member of the Order of Australia, ‘For service to the community through Christian Ministry, encouraging cross-cultural theological education and as an author’.