AustLit

'The familiar periodisations of post-World War II Australian history sample their own versions of Donald Horne, each evoked in Ryan Cropp's biography. There is the ‘mean-spirited’ (p.116) Cold War warrior through to Horne's emergence as ‘Australia's leading republican’ (p.40) in the 1970s. Then comes Horne's prominence at the intersection of ‘public culture’, ‘cultural policy’ and (in retaliation under John Howard as – so Horne described him shortly before his death in 2005– ‘the ayatollah of the Australian character’) the ‘culture wars’ from the 1990s onwards. In between, of course, was The Lucky Country, that incisive account of the average Australian (‘a man in an open-necked shirt, solemnly eating an ice-cream’), never out of print since 1964, set for school curricula, its ironic title so frequently misunderstood.' (Introduction)

'A few years ago, I had occasion to re-read The Lucky Country. It stood up well, and although dated (naturally) the book holds its place alongside Trollope and Hancock as a contemporary response that has become a classic account of Australia. But as Ryan Cropp makes plain, this bestselling book – which apparently has never gone out of print – is only one of a couple of dozen. For a man who, when asked how he would like to be described on his tombstone, said ‘writer and talker … and luncher’, Horne was astonishingly productive. When well into his sixties, he wrote seven books in five years. And at the very end – co-written with his wife Myfanwy – he even managed one on dying.' (Introduction)

'A compelling biography captures the trajectory of the man who named the lucky country'

'Here we are again, luck ringing over the land. Ryan Cropp’s new examination of the life and work of Donald Horne (1921–2005) comes out as we resume unpicking the gordian knot of what exactly is Australia. As Cropp observes, it has become impossible to describe this nation without the word luck, as if a continent rolls dice. It is the language of gamblers, of the complacent. It wasn’t introduced by Horne – any survey of the country’s newspapers will find Australia panegyrised or dismissed for riding its luck, but with the publication of The Lucky Country in 1964 Horne caught a truth in a sentence: ‘Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck.’ It was Horne’s personal stroke of luck, changing him as it changed his country. In later years, when Horne became one of those people who ran the place, had Donald joined the second-raters, sharing the spoils of chance?' (Introduction)