Biography

Honour Games

by Alan Atkinson •

August 2003, no. 253

Man of Honour: John Macarthur – duellist, rebel, Founding Father by Michael Duffy

Macmillan, $35 pb, 376 pp

Biography

Honour Games

by Alan Atkinson •

August 2003, no. 253

As I read this book, serious questions were being asked about the honour of three governments: the British, the US and our own. Did they all lie so as to justify war against Iraq? Honour still matters, even at a time when the word is not used as often as it once was. Michael Duffy’s book about John Macarthur, one of the best-known inhabitants of colonial Australia, constructs him as a ‘man of honour’. It ought to be topical.

Alan Atkinson

Alan Atkinson is an honorary senior research fellow at the University of Western Australia. The third and final volume of his book, The Europeans in Australia, won the Victorian Prize for Literature 2015 and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History. He is also the author of Camden, The Commonwealth of Speech and a number of other books. His forthcoming book, Elizabeth and John: The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm (NewSouth Publishing), will appear in late 2022.