Winner of the Age Book of the Year AwardGraham Freudenberg's inside account of Gough Whitlam's political rise and fall is one of the great classics of Australian political writing. From his position as Gough's speechwriter and confidant, just out of the spotlight of history, Freudenberg was an eyewitness to Gough's spectacular rise and fall, which he documents with compelling drama. But A Certain Grandeur's most significant achievement is to capture so vividly the characte...

"Australia seemed to bring out the worst in Winston Churchill. Often enough to form a discernible pattern, Australia found itself on the wrong side of the very qualities-his strength of will, singleness of purpose, his refusal to 'give way, in things great or small, large or petty', the power of his imagination to set grim reality at defiance, his mastery of the English language-that made Winston Churchill, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin described him, 'the saviour of his country, the la...