Figure of Speech : A Political Memoir

Brisbane, John Wiley & Sons, 2005 [1st edition, 1st impression]; 160 x 240 mm, xii, 307 pp, Hardcover. Condition: Like New, Dust Jacket Condition Like New. Will be shipped in a custom protective book box, and postal tracking information will be supplied. ""Gough Whitlam had once described my writing as 'too dithvrambic' as against his own 'too inspissated' style. He added. 'Comrade. we complement each other'. I accepted the compliment, even after consulting the dictionary to find that inspissated is 'dry, dense in detail' and dithyrambic is 'wild, uncontrolled, related to bacchanalian dances'. ""My parents belonged firmly to that section of the Australian middle class who kept their jobs throughout the Depression but somehow blamed it all on the unions . they identified themselves with Menzies' ""forgotten people"" and triumphed with him in 1949. I come from the same stable as John Winston Howard 'Like the invasion of Iraq forty vears later, Australia's war in Vietnam began with lies. As with Iraq, the Australian electorate accepted the lies, almost as willing accomplices, and for the same overriding reason: support for the American alliance at all costs . ""Whitlam never made a major speech in which I had been involved without touching me on the shoulder for luck just before he left to deliver it. The last time he performed this ritual was in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in August 2002.""