Tony Martin

Tony Martin is an award winning author. His first book, The Strugglers (1989), won the prestigious author award from the United Kingdom Literacy Association. It describes his work trying to teach children who had failed to learn to read. Between 1989 and 2014 he wrote a number of books about different aspects of the teaching and learning of literacy. The Really Useful Literacy Book (3rd Ed 2012) also won the United Kingdom Literacy Association’s author award. How then did he come to write the history book, A Convict Couple? Back in 2014 Tony decided to research the Martin family history which turned out to be centred on South East London and the docks. Having traced back the Martins to 1840, he began the same process with his father’s mother whose maiden name was Dunbar. He arrived at his great great grandmother, Mary Anne, living in London but in the census of 1851 giving her place of birth as New South Wales. His great great grandmother had been born in Australia! This unexpected discovery led to four years of research, in both England and Australia; from the British Library in London to the Mitchell Library in Sydney via the wealth of information now available on the internet. A Convict Couple explores life at the time for ordinary people caught up in ‘crime and punishment’ over two hundred years ago. Ironically, before Tony knew he had ancestors who had lived in Australia, both of his children decided to settle there. He and his wife, Nancy, recently joined them. They regularly ride on the Manly ferry across Sydney harbour and, every time, Tony imagines his convict ancestors gazing out at the landscape just as he does now.