Author Description

For forty years Sir Garfield Barwick stood at the centre of power in Australia. He was an advocate who saved the private banks from Chifley and fought to destroy the Communist Party. He was the Attorney-General who reformed the divorce laws and the Foreign Minister who put Australian troops in Vietnam. He was the Chief Justice who broke down the tax laws, dramatically advanced the power of Canberra and gave Sir John Kerr the constitutional imprimatur to dismiss the Whitlam government. Barwick is the portrait of a complex and driven man who began life in the Sydney slums, a man totally committed to the exercise of power and utterly certain of the rightness of his beliefs. It is also a remarkable insight into the inner workings of Australia's supreme legal institution.