Cirrus@Austlit

'There has been an argument going on in the Liberal Party about the nature of the Menzies heritage – was Robert Menzies, the founder of the modern party, a liberal or a conservative? Notably absent from this discussion has been the national figure who was the first leader of a united anti-Labor party and who also happens to have been a father of Federation, Alfred Deakin. If our politicians still read books – and sometimes one does wonder – Judith Brett’s new biography, The Enigmatic Mr Deakin, should be required reading. As Brett has pointed out, the minority governments of the Federation’s first decade were extraordinarily productive in laying the legislative foundations of the new Commonwealth, in stark contrast to the parliamentary paralysis of recent years.' (Introduction)

'Written by award-winning author John Rickard, An Imperial Affair takes us into the marriage of an Australian couple during a time when private lives were properly private, and when divorce was a scandal. The book shines a light on the family values and sexual dynamics of this period, conditioned as they were by the imperial relationship and cultural dependence on 'the mother country,' which inevitably helped shape hopes, fear, and desires. This is also a beautifully told story of the author's sensitive and courageous quest to understand his parents Philip and Pearl, and the world he came from and grew up in, its fragile reality filtered through the prism of memory. Part biography, part autobiography, part social history, An Imperial Affair is also a complex, quintessentially Australian meditation on the nature of love.' (Publication summary)