Ascent to Power by Brian Dale

Allen & Unwin, $8.95 pb, 148 pp

For a reform politician, these three books should be compulsory reading. They are not, for such a reader, heartening. But they do ‘serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate’.

Brian Dale’s Ascent to Power (Allen & Unwin, $8.95 pb, 148 pp), very much less than fair to Neville Wran, is an unintended exposé of the nature of political journalism in this country and its practitioners.