Neither a conventional biography nor an autobiography, Billy Snedden is a story told in two quite distinct and authentic voices. There is that of the late Sir Billy Snedden, Liberal Party leader from 1972 to 1975, and Dr Bernie Schedvin, lecturer in politics at La Trobe University.

The pairing of the honest ‘liberal Liberal’ whose working class Scots coal-mining father deserted the Snedden family at an early age and the middle-class, middle-aged psychoanalytically articulate and politically oriented scholar is an unlikely one, but it works remarkably well. Combining narrative, anecdote, political observations and (psycho)analysis, An Unlikely Liberal is a revealing tale of the origins of the vulnerable Billy Snedden’s movement into the political arena, his limited triumphs, and his many disappointments.