Author(s): MATTHEWS Brian

Biography

Manning Clark was one of the most influential Australian intellectuals of the last half century. His political pronouncements were often highly provocative and his sweeping judgements, dire denunciations and oracular prophecies infuriated conservatives. His most enduring legacy, however, was his magisterial 6-volume History of Australia. In it he reshaped the now familiar story of Australia's modern evolution; from the First Fleet's arrival, the convicts, the rum rebellion, gold, the sheep's back, Federation, and the glorious defeat at Gallipoli, up to the nation emerging from the Great Depression and on the threshold of a new world war. Within the dramatic narrative, which he envisaged as an epic, are highly original and insightful portraits of its great men with their tragic flaws: Phillip, Macquarie, Burke and Wills, Bligh, Wentworth, and above all, Henry Lawson. But behind this ambitious work - with its more than a million words and 25 long, slogging years of research and scholarship - was a man as flawed as the historical figures he was presenting.
He was wracked with self-doubt, dogged by fears of failure and personal weakness, craved forgiveness for the betrayals that stalked and threatened his marriage to Dymphna, and wrestled with an elusive Christ in whom he longed to have a secure faith. Behind the signature broad hat and the stern unsmiling visage was a tortured man. That is the complex, enigmatic and thoroughly enthralling Clark who emerges in this remarkable biography.