In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Judith Brett, the acclaimed political historian, chats with Gabriella about her choices while writing The Enigmatic Mr Deakin, the biography of Alfred Deakin, Australia’s second Prime Minister. The Enigmatic Mr Deakin won the 2018 National Biography Award and was shortlisted in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, NSW Premier’s History Awards and Queensland Literary Awards.
Judith Brett shares with us why she titled her biography The Enigmatic Mr Deakin. She also explains why she opened the biography by comparing Ned Kelly, the notorious outlaw, and Alfred Deakin. Judith describes her painstaking research strategy and how she achieved a unique synthesis of Deakin’s public life with his beliefs, doubts, private struggles and spiritual wrestling. She also shares with us how she balanced technical details of politics and parliament to craft an engaging narrative for readers who might not have a political background.
A biography of immense power that will restore Deakin to his proper place in the national imagination: the mystic politician who gave us Australia.
David Marr
Alfred Deakin - scholar, spiritualist, Prime Minister - was instrumental in creating modern Australia.
In the first biography of Deakin in more than half a century, the acclaimed political historian Judith Brett deftly weaves together his public, private and family lives.
She brings out from behind the image of a worthy, bearded father of federation the principled and passionate, gifted and
eccentric figure whose legacy continues to shape the contours of the nation’s politics.
Alfred Deakin
Source: National Library of Australia
‘The Enigmatic Mr Deakin stands as the culmination of Judith Brett’s work
on the history, politics and philosophy of Australian liberals, and it is the
one biography of Deakin to which we will repeatedly return. Brett’s writing is
capable of extraordinary clarity, insight and compassion.’
Mark McKenna, Monthly
‘This is a fine biography—accessible, perceptive, and in the best way, sympathetic. Deakin has found the interpreter he deserves for a modern audience…If our politicians still read books—and sometimes one does wonder—Judith Brett’s new biography should be required reading.’
Australian Book Review
‘What makes Brett’s book so rewarding to read is its confident, supple writing style, intelligent interposing of political events with Deakin’s inner psychic turmoil and shifts in the wider world; mastery of the facts, and capacity to bring her own balance to understanding a man who was, as she pointed out, enigmatic.’
Australian Financial Review
‘Judith Brett has proven the perfect biographer…’
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‘The Enigmatic Mr Deakin explores our second Prime Minister's career with full attention to his intense inner life and family relationships. Her title
points to the puzzles, but Brett doesn’t simplify; she ponders, suggests, dramatises. Closely observed and psychologically persuasive, this is more than a life-and-times; it is a life.’
Brenda Niall, Australian
Book Review
Judith Brett is the author of Robert Menzies’s Forgotten People and Emeritus Professor of Politics at La Trobe University. Her biography of Australia’s second Prime Minister, The Enigmatic Mr Deakin, won the 2018 National Biography Award, and was shortlisted in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, NSW Premier’s History Awards and Queensland Literary Awards. Her latest book, From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage, is a landmark account of the character of Australian democracy, and was shortlisted in Australian History, Prime Minister’s Literary Award, 2020.