Written in response to:
15 August 2014: political memoirs
Rachel Morley writes ‘2014 has been something of a watershed year for books on Australian politics’.
I am interested to see the word ‘watershed’ used in a vague sense such as Meg Greenfield noted in US political usage 40 or 45 years ago. Even there, though, the Americans preserved a sense of crossing a divide, and passing from one watershed to another. Without knowing what books on Australian politics were published in 2013, I can’t guess whether Ms. Morley finds that they have changed, or are just plentiful; but I suspect the latter.
But we are currently facing something of an armada – to steal a phrase from the popular media – of political memoirs and biographies.
An armada that cannot shed water is in trouble. I think that I would leave the popular media in peaceable enjoyment of their phrase, or failing that, pray for a Protestant wind.
George Jansen
Washington DC