At a time when one is reading of Cabinet decisions to cut many of the remaining constitutional links with Britain (Premiers’ Conference, June), thus moving Australia closer to national sovereignty, it is timely to be reminded of events only just over the contemporary horizon which could be said to have matured this nation into quickening the pace towards that independence of British dominion – no matter how tenuous politically, yet still incipiently present in the Statute Books and by Privy Council.

As an American friend, now working professionally in the legal sphere in Western Australia, said percipiently on Australia Day: the problem for Australia is that it never has had its own War of Independence. Well, it has had its 1975 upheaval – and Sir John Kerr to boot. So reading Bruce Grant’s book Gods and Politicians has been absorbing, especially as we are now granted the wisdom of hindsight knowing that both nations survived to see another day.