Evatt: A Life

by PeterCrockett (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1993

  $3.39

  Herbert Vere Evatt, famous Australian lawyer, politician and intellectual, was one of the key Australian public figures of the twentieth century. In 1930, at the remarkably young age of thirty-six, he was elevated to the High Court. After the Second World War he played a key role in the foundation of the United Nations. In the 1950s his opposition to Menzies' proposed outlawing of the Communist Party of Australia confirmed his reputation as a great libertarian. Yet Evatt's personality generated controversy, and his long and brilliant career ended in the bathos and ignominy of the Petrov Royal Commission and his final years as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Peter Crockett's study of Evatt shows him to have been ambitious, difficult, capricious and larger than life. He could be brusque towards colleagues and subordinates, and his selfishness and egotism were marked. Evatt's writings, which dealt almost exclusively with political and constitutional power relations, reveal a passion for intrigue and preoccupation with authority. Nevertheless, in high office or as a civil libertarian Evatt's fundamental idealism was evident in his commitment to social and political justice, and never more so than during the Petrov affair, which Peter Crockett explores and reinterprets in great depth. H.V. Evatt: A Life examines its subject's character by drawing on Evatt's childhood influences and on the recollections of his contemporaries. Crockett traces the play of character on public life and analyses Evatt's politics with reference to his intense, mercurial personality,and idiosyncrasies. He shows a man driven to wielding power not only to right injustices and advance Australia's interests with great foresight, but to satisfy his own psychological imperatives.