In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Troy Bramston chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Gough Whitlam: The Vista of the New. This is the first full biography of Gough Whitlam, a former Australian Prime Minister, since his death in 2014.
Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:
- The biography’s subtitle The Vista of the New came from a poem Gough Whitlam wrote in 1934 as a student at Canberra Grammar School. In it, he imagines a bolder brighter future for Australia.
- The biography’s central theme is political leadership.
- Troy Bramston is interested in how power is gained, used and lost.
- Gough Whitlam’s school reports noted his difficulty getting along with others. These interpersonal failures would contribute to his downfall decades later.
- Troy argues that Whitlam was not a man of destiny but a man of history, driven not by a sense of predestination but by a hunger to change Australia’s direction.
- Troy makes a compelling case for advancing the biographical subject. Continually asking what is new, he argues that a biography that doesn’t tell us something we didn’t know before, however well written, fails to fully justify itself.