Sir Garfield Barwick wrote the story of his public life. At the age of 92, he had been at the centre of Australian legal and political life for over half a century. The story starts in the inner suburbs of Sydney walking to the renowned Fort Street High School. Sydney University in the 1920s follows and a struggling career at the Bar takes hold before all is lost in the Great Depression. Civilian service in World War II was followed by triumph in the Bank Nationalisation Case. The defeat of the Chifley Government's legislation established Sir Garfield's reputation as an advocate in Australia and in the United Kingdom. It led to a decade of unparalleled dominance of the Australian Bar when he continually appeared in the High Court and led in such public inquiries as the Petrov Royal Commission. It also established Sir Garfield in the public mind as a Liberal Party man and in 1958, at the age of 56, he entered Parliament. He served six years, almost all on the front bench as a reforming Attorney-General as Minister for External Affairs focussing on Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia. He resigned to become Chief Justice of the High Court in 1964 and in the next 18 years gave judgments delineating power in modern Australia: citizen and government, States and the Commonwealth, executive and legislature. Most notably, he provided crucial and controversial advice to the Governor-General in the 1975 Dismissal Crisis.

A fully revised and updated edition of Nigel Lawson's extraordinary autobiography. A key minister for a full decade and Chancellor of the Exchequer, from 1983 to 1989, Nigel Lawson was one of the most powerful and effective of Margaret Thatcher's colleagues, and among the chief architects of Thatcherism. This abridged edition of Lord Lawson's memoirs - first published as The View from No.11 in 1992 and acclaimed as one of the best political memoirs of the period - goes straight to the heart of economic policy-making at a time of crisis and creative change. It explains the workings of government with candour, clarity and depth, against the backdrop of the remarkable story of the rise and fall of his political collaboration with Margaret Thatcher, productive and successful for many years, but ending with his dramatic resignation in October 1989.The book includes a new final chapter reflecting on events from the perspective of 2010, also discussing the crisis in the banking sector and global warming.

Set to be the most controversial, hotly debated and provocative political book of 2010.

Between 1830 and 1914 in Britain a dramatic modification of the reputation of Edmund Burke (1730-1797) occurred. Burke, an Irishman and Whig politician, is now most commonly known as the 'founder of modern conservatism' - an intellectual tradition which is also deeply connected to the identity of the British Conservative Party. The idea of 'Burkean conservatism' - a political philosophy which upholds 'the authority of tradition', the organic, historic conception of society, and the necessity of order, religion, and property - has been incredibly influential both in international academic analysis and in the wider political world. This is a highly significant intellectual construct, but its origins have not yet been understood. Emily Jones demonstrates, for the first time, that the transformation of Burke into the 'founder of conservatism' was in fact part of wider developments in British political, intellectual, and cultural history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing from a wide range of sources, including political texts, parliamentary speeches, histories, biographies, and educational curricula, Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism shows how and why Burke's reputation was transformed over a formative period of British history. In doing so, it bridges the significant gap between the history of political thought as conventionally understood and the history of the making of political traditions. The result is to demonstrate that, by 1914, Burke had been firmly established as a 'conservative' political philosopher and was admired and utilized by political Conservatives in Britain who identified themselves as his intellectual heirs. This was one essential component of a conscious re-working of C/conservatism which is still at work today.