Paul Keating: The big picture leader

ANU/The Canberra Times meet the author event with Troy Bramston

Troy Bramston will be in conversation with The Australian's Editor-At-Large, Paul Kelly, on Bramston's new biography of Paul Keating. The first biography that Keating has cooperated with in more than two decades. It draws on around 15 hours of new interviews with Keating, coupled with access to his extensive personal files. Bramston has interviewed more than 100 people who know and worked with Keating, including his family, advisers, party officials, union leaders, public servants, journalists, and parliamentary colleagues, including Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Doug Anthony, Bill Hayden, Andrew Peacock and Tony Blair.

Bramston has secured access to Labor archives and he also documents key debates in once-secret cabinet papers, reveals caucus minutes for the first time. This book chronicles, analyses, and interprets Keating's life, and draws lessons for a Labor Party and a country still reluctant to fully embrace his legacy.

Troy Bramston has been a senior writer and columnist with The Australian newspaper, and a contributor to Sky News, since 2011. Troy is the author or editor of seven previous books, including Looking for the Light on the Hill (2011), Rudd, Gillard and Beyond (2014), and, with Paul Kelly, The Dismissal (2015). 

Pre-book signings at 5.30pm and after the event. Books will be on sale thanks to the University Co-Op bookshop