Focuses on McAuley as a 'political ideologist and cold war warrior' rather than as a poet and critic and concentrates on his involvement, during the war, with A. A. Conlon's Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs and, post-war, with the Democratic Labor Party, the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom and the journal Quadrant. Attempts to explain two important forces in McAuley's life - his religious conversion and his passionate opposition to communism - in terms of a profound belief in the devil . Attributes the former to his encounter, in New Guinea, with Catholic Archbishop Alain de Boismenu, whose story of the nun and mystic Marie-Therese Noblet , believed to be possessed by the devil., made a profound impact on McAuley. Views his political stance as that of a Catholic convert who projected 'his own deep personal torment onto the Devil and Communist agents in the service of the Devil'. (Dust-jacket)
