Ruminations

A judge, novelist and arts adviser, Nicholas Hasluck’s work includes acute appraisals of people he met or wrote about along the way. His recollections cast light on political controversies, as in Menzies Versus Evatt. The Whitlam Dismissal Revisited. The Referendum Puzzle. From Pericles to Trump. And also on the personal and at times surprising pursuits of various lawyers, artists and writers, such as Ian Callinan: A Voice for Law and Literature, or Anthony Powell’s Mosaic, or Saving Dorothy Hewett. The author’s ruminations about trends and personalities are always underpinned by a keen awareness of communal values: the way things were and the way they could be in times to come.