Brian Fitzpatrick: A Radical Life

by Don Watson

In the four decades of his public life, Brian Fitzpatrick (1906–96) was variously journalist, historian, adviser to governments, publicist, and chief spokesman in Australia for civil liberties.

His politics had a maverick quality. The right damned him as a 'fellow-traveller'; their radical opponents saw him as a left liberal. In truth he remained an independent radical, one of this country's very few freelance intellectuals.

For the author of British Imperialism and Australia, The British Empire in Australia, and A Short History of the Australian Labor Movement, an appreciation of the past and a commitment to a political stance were indissolubly bound. Writing history was in itself a political act.

Yet, despite his impact on Australian history writing and on Australian political and intellectual culture, despite his contribution to the defence of civil liberties, Brian Fitzpatrick: A radical life is the first substantial study of his life's work.

375 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1979

About the author

Watson grew up on a farm in Gippsland, took his undergraduate degree at La Trobe University and a Ph.D at Monash University and was for ten years an academic historian. He wrote three books on Australian history before turning his hand to TV and the stage. For several years he combined writing political satire for the actor Max Gillies with political speeches for the former Premier of Victoria, John Cain.

In 1992 he became Prime Minister Paul Keating's speech-writer and adviser and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart': Paul Keating Prime Minister, won both the The Age Book of the Year and non-fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year.

In addition to regular books, articles and essays, in recent years he has also written feature films, including The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis. His 2001 Quarterly Essay Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Death Sentence, his book about the decay of public language, was also a best seller and won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year. Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words was published in 2004 and continued to encourage readers to renounce what he perceives to be meaningless corporate and government jargon that is spreading throughout Australia and embrace meaningful, precise language. More recently Watson contributed the preface to a selection of Mark Twain's writings, The Wayward Tourist.

His latest book, American Journeys is a narrative of modern America from Watson's travels in the United States following Hurricane Katrina. It was published by Knopf in 2008 and won both the The Age Book of the Year non-fiction and Book of the Year awards.[4]. It also won the 2008 Walkley Award for the best non-fiction book.