Journalist Peter Rees’s biography of Tim Fischer was originally published by Allen & Unwin in 2001 with the title The Boy from Boree Creek. Reviewing the volume in this magazine, fellow journalist Shaun Carney had many kind words for Fischer, but said that the book was ‘either a lesson in the wonders of our democracy or a cautionary tale demonstrating the mediocrity of our public figures’ (ABR, June 2001). The subject was a ‘decent, determined, and hardworking person’, Carney wrote, but one who left the National Party in ‘a seemingly permanent existential crisis’.

The updated edition, with the new title I Am Tim: Life, politics and beyond, necessarily tells the story of a more complete life, including a moving account of Fischer’s stoicism in the face of cancer and declining health. The original material has been reorganised and trimmed to furnish a less teleological, and perhaps more writerly, product for Melbourne University Publishing. (Fischer’s love of trains still features prominently, of course.)