Peter Ryan

Peter Ryan reviews ‘Walking on Water: A life in the law’ by Chester Porter

October 2003, no. 255 • 01 October 2003

All young persons contemplating ‘a life in the law’ as a career should read this book, ideally when they are about sixteen, to allow adequate time to switch to dentistry, say, or engineering. But whatever your age, Chester Porter’s huge experience, wisdom and humanity will enlighten you about the true inwardness of those sometimes compatible concepts, justice and law. ... (read more)

Peter Ryan reviews ‘Ruxton: A biography’ by Anne Blair

October 2004, no. 265 • 01 October 2004

For more than twenty years, Bruce Ruxton was Victorian president of the RSL, and one of the best-known names in Australia. ‘Best-known’ does not necessarily mean ‘best-loved’; few public figures cut so clear a chasm between supporters and detractors. Knowing Ruxton well over many years, let me declare that on the day I meet another man who equals him for kindness of heart and dedication to ... (read more)

Peter Ryan reviews ‘Huge Deal: the fortunes and follies of Hugh D. McIntosh’ by Frank Van Straten

March 2005, no. 269 • 01 March 2005

No Australian native son blazed brighter than Hugh D. McIntosh (1876–1942). Here is a lively biography of a Sydney boy who left school aged seven and rose to be the Squire of Broome Park in Kent, the stately seat of Lord Kitchener. McIntosh – contender though he became for a seat in the House of Commons – remained always an Australian. At Broome Park, a cricket pitch was laid down with ten t ... (read more)

Peter Ryan reviews 'On the Warpath: An anthology of Australian military travel' edited by Robin Gerster and Peter Pierce

April 2004, no. 260 • 01 April 2004

Note especially the last word in the subtitle – ‘travel’. This book is not, or not chiefly, about strategy and battles. It is about getting to the war, or passing through an operational area and (with luck) getting home again; it is about visiting war cemeteries, battlefields and memorials, or revisiting them, sometimes decades later. You may think this a wispy and slender thread upon which ... (read more)

Peter Ryan reviews 'The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Vols. I–VII', edited by John Coates and Peter Dennis

December 2001–January 2002, no. 237 • 12 August 2022

This handsome set of volumes – this ‘library’, it might almost be said – is one of the finest large publishing projects undertaken in Australia over recent years. Dedicated to ‘those who have served in the defence of Australia, 1901–2001’, it is brought triumphantly to a conclusion by the recent issue of its Volume VII, An Atlas of Australia’s Wars. This climactic volume, lying ope ... (read more)

Peter Ryan reviews 'Australia’s Boer War: The war in South Africa 1899–1902' by Craig Wilcox

April 2003, no. 250 • 01 April 2003

Ever since Federation, Australians have heard of the Boer War, as they have heard of the Wars of the Roses. As to deep understanding, they have as much about the one war as about the other. As a ‘Matric’ student in 1939, I had for my Commercial Practice teacher a Boer War veteran – lean, tall, bowlegged – every schoolboy’s image of our horsemen who had taught the Empire’s enemies such ... (read more)