About the Authors

Robert Ketton

Robert Ketton was educated at The King's School in Tynemouth and Newcastle about Tyne University where he studied Dram in Education under the legendary Dorothy Heathcote and later acting at the Burton School of Speech and Drama. Robert was appointed inaugural theatre teacher at Burton on Trent Grammar School and then Head of Drama and Foxhills Comprehensive School in Lincolnshire.

In 1974 he migrated to Queensland Australia where he helped introduce Theatre into Queensland Secondary schools by assisting in writing the initial syllabus. Queensland is generally recognised as a leader in the field of secondary drama. In 1976 he was appointed lecturer in Theatre in Education at the University of Southern Queensland. In 1992 he was made Senior Lecturer in stage and screen and acting and has been Head of The Department of Theatre of that University on several occasions. Robert has written some dozen plays, published collaboratively eight books and directed over twenty-five major stage productions.

Robert has made short films, scripted a number of English as a Second Language cartoons and conducted several hypotheticals for groups as diverse as Australian College of General Practice and The National Conference of the Department of Primary Industry. He is currently writing a play in collaboration with Bruce Dawe, Australia's leading poet. The work commissioned by Queensland Arts Council will tour state secondary schools in 2003. This is his third writing collaboration with Bruce Dawe.

For the past five years he has run a highly successful course 'How to Be a More Dynamic Presenter' and is a popular MC and public speaker. 

Robert Browning

Robert Browning was an English poet noted for his mastery of dramatic monologue. Browning was long unsuccessful as a poet and financially dependent upon his family until he was well into adulthood. He is now viewed as one of the great poets of the Victorian era.

Born in London, he was the son of Robert Browning, a wealthy clerk in the Bank of England, and Sarah Anna Wiedemann, of German-Scottish origin. He received little formal education, but had access to his father's large library. At the age of 16 he began to study at the newly established London University, and his early poetical works attracted little attention until the publication of Paracelsus (1835).

In 1846 Browning married the poet Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861), and settled with her in Florence. He produced comparatively little poetry during the next 15 years. When Elizabeth Browning died in 1861, he moved to London with his son Robert Barrett Browning (1849-1912). There he wrote his greatest work, The Ring and the Book (1869), based on the proceedings in a murder trial in Rome in 1698. It consisted of 10 verse narratives, all dealing with the same crime, each from a distinct viewpoint.

In the 1850s and 1860s Browning's reputation began to revive. The masterpiece of his middle period, Men and Women was published in 1855. With Dramatis Personae (1864) and The Ring and the Book he was back in the literary scene. In the 1870s Browning published several works, including The Inn Album (1875), and a translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon. The Browning Society was founded in 1881 as an indication of the poet's status as a sage and celebrity. Robert Browning died on December 12, 1889 in Venice in his son's house.