Colleen McCullough, Thorn Birds author, dies

Australian author Colleen McCullough, whose novel The Thorn Birds sold 30 million copies worldwide, died on January 29, 2015, at age 77 after a long illness.

The Thorn Birds was the classic story of the doomed romance between de Bricassart (played by Richard Chamberlain in the wildly popular TV miniseries that won four Golden Globes) and his young lover Meggie Cleary.

In recent years, McCullough had continued producing books despite a string of health and eyesight problems by using dictation.

McCullough wrote 25 novels throughout her career. Her final book Bittersweet was released in 2013.

^{Colleen McCullough REX FEATURES}

Her first novel Tim was published in 1974. It became a movie starring Mel Gibson, who played a young, mentally disabled handyman who had a romance with a middle-aged woman.

Her second novel, The Thorn Birds, published in 1977, is remembered fondly for the TV adaptation that also starred Christopher Plummer. The author herself did not like the TV series (she used to refer to it as "instant vomit") saying once: "Nah. I didn’t think that the director had any idea of what he was doing. The um, screen writer was a Baptist female from the mid-west, and I didn’t like Chamberlain in the role anyway."

Before becoming an author, McCullough studied neuroscience and spent 10 years as a researcher at Yale Medical School in the United States. She established the neurophysiology department at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital.

During the Eighties, she wrote love stories including An Indecent Obsession and The Ladies of Missalonghi. One of her finest achievements was her historical seven-novel series Masters of Rome, which was published from 1990 to 2007.

McCullough died in hospital on remote Norfolk Island. She is survived by her husband, Ric Robinson.

The Thorn Birds' title refers to a mythical bird that searches for thorn trees from the day it is hatched. When it finds the perfect thorn, it impales itself, singing the most beautiful song ever heard as it dies. McCullough rejected repeated pleas from publishers to write a sequel to The Thorn Birds.

^{The Thorn Birds has become a classic over many re-prints}