David Lange’s autobiography was published on 1 August 2005. Twelve days later, he died in Auckland, at the age of sixty-three, after kidney failure and a long battle with amyloidosis, a rare disorder of plasma cells in the bone marrow, having been kept alive by a pacemaker, chemotherapy, peritoneal dialysis, and blood transfusions. He had been a diabetic for many years. When My Life appeared, press reports concentrated on isolated paragraphs and sentences, containing critical remarks about his former ministers, and about Bob Hawke. The book could have been dismissed as shrill vituperation, but it is far more than that. My Life is a touching, searching and reflective work, deeply analytical and self-critical. David showed great courage in completing an autobiography so close to death.

After Lange died, I was dismayed by the dismissive feature articles that appeared in Australian newspapers, especially one in The Age by Tony Parkinson, spokesman for the US cheer squad, attacking him as ‘a poseur and dilettante who misread badly the pulse of history’ – coded language for refusing to be a mere pillion passenger in foreign policy issues. In New Zealand, Jim Bolger, former National Party prime minister, later ambassador to Washington, wrote a thoughtful piece in The Dominion, defending David Lange on the nuclear ships issue.