Notwithstanding recent expressions of disaffection with large-scale narrative biography (e.g., James Walter's biography of Whitlam), I remain a devotee of the genre. In Australia, our communal sense of identity, our historiographical debates and our literature are diminished by the infrequency of such works.

Although suffering from too prolonged preparation, and over-phenomenological in conception, Henry Parkes is a fine example of the kind of ambitious conventional biography we need. The book is the product of both unflagging empiricism and a wistful identification with Parkes and his Victorian flamboyance of character.