We live in an age of leader- and media-centric politics. There is a name and a personality attached to every significant political initiative, and chief among them are prime ministers and premiers. Political junkies will be familiar with the torrent of ‘leader’ profiles generated by the press and well versed in identifying implicit bias. Yet we constitute a ready market for biographies of current (and perhaps rising) stars, and journalists are often first to seize the opportunity to write ‘the first draft of history’. How well do we understand the genre and its effects?

Chris Wallace is a shrewd and experienced political journalist; an accomplished biographer with previous works on Germaine Greer, John Hewson, and Don Bradman; and now an academic. This book draws on her PhD thesis. That breadth of experience is significant: she presents an innovative argument, is diligent about archival research and direct engagement with those about whom she is writing, and her lively and accessible style and gift for telling anecdotes will win a wide readership.

Her argument is that contemporary political biography – that is, work published while its subject is still active – can constitute a political intervention that might make or break a politician. She was driven to this realisation by reflecting on the potentially adverse influence of a biography of Julia Gillard she was near to completing while Gillard was still prime minister. It was never intended as an attack biography, yet Wallace became convinced that her analysis of Gillard’s gifts and all too human flaws would be filleted by opponents looking for negatives to amplify their already fierce denigration of Gillard. So, she abandoned the project, and returned her publishing advance.