In Search of Billy Hughes

by Donald Horne

The Macmillan Company of Australia, 1979, [First Edition], ISBN 0333252470, colour plates, black and white photographs and illustrations, black and white frontispiece, hardcover, dust jacket

Very Good Condition, some edge and shelf wear, some rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, previous owners inscription on front end paper, dustjacket shows minor edge and shelf wear (see photographs)

“’William Morris Hughes was an illusionist who summoned up magical shapes and was an epic enough liar to play some part in the making of his own legend.’  SO begins Donald Horne’s portrait of Hughes, born 1862, the son of a carpenter and domestic servant.  His early childhood was spent in London but following the death of his mother, when he was seven, Hughes spent the next five years living with his aunt in Wales.
He began his working life as a pupil/teacher under the supervision of Matthew Arnold.  In 1884, after five years, he left to seek his fortune in Australia.  His attempts to find work as a schoolteacher were unsuccessful and he went bush.
In this portrait, Donald Horne has revealed one of the most extraordinary men ever to walk the political stage in Australia.  The tiny man with big ears was a contradiction: a radical socialist who was friendly with the press barons; a landowner, patriot and jaunty orator who strutted across Europe with other Empire leaders while the horror of the trenches echoed across the English Channel; a man who became Prime Minister using the language of hatred but was adored by the Anzacs, and was known to them as the ‘Little Digger’.”