Geoff Nadin on the Stewart Dawson family fortune won and lost in 'Treasure House'

Good Reading Podcast

Treasure House is the story of the Stewart Dawson dynasty: watchmakers and jewellers, Australian pioneers of Jazz Age popular culture and entertainment, property tycoons and philanthropists. They counted stars of stage and screen, earls and princes among their connections. It's also a story of marital duplicity and deception, hubris and abuse of privilege, hedonism, fraud, and criminal violence. Treasure House traces the rise and fall of a once great family that left a trail of victims and damaged lives. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Geoff Nadin about how he came upon the story of the Stewart Dawsons, the marketing ingenuity and business acumen that laid the foundations for a great family fortune, the glamour and excess of the Stewart Dawsons enterprises in 1920s Australia and the eventual squandering of a legacy and final plunge into obscurity.