Book review - Suddenly Last Winter” by Bob Ellis

The ALP’s return to power at a Federal level saw Ellis get his groove back writing about politics – I agree with Kim Beazley in that Ellis’ hatred for John Howard was so overwhelming it became monotonous and distorted his pieces, making them boring (blaming Howard for the Boxing day tsunami?). The reign of Kevin Rudd meant Ellis could go back to doing what he liked best – being wistful about lost eras and complaining about flawed ALP leaders. His pieces in ‘Unleashed’ running up to the 2010 election contained some of his best ever writing – he was spot on in a lot of his analysis (on the thugs of the ALP right, pointing out assassins don’t have honeymoons, asking why people would vote in a government on it’s record when they’d just assassinated their leader). His man crush on Tony Abbott led to some wonderful pieces, making up for his inherent misogyny (and it’s there, it’s always been there in his writing) when discussing Gillard.

It’s a highly entertaining account of one of the most fascinating elections in recent memory, rich in character and incident. Sometimes Ellis is guilty of smoking the crack pipe (thinking he has impacted the nation by a quick exchange with Tony Windsor the morning after the election – many megalomaniacs suffer from these sort of delusional) and he goes easy on anyone who pays him attention (eg calling Nick Minchin a good man because he came over and said hello when Minchin’s policies are against Ellis in pretty much every way), but often he’s spot on. Lots of bits I didn’t know, like Rhys Muldoon being close to Rudd.

We get all sorts of insights into Ellis’ life which seems to consist of a lot of getting in cabs, cars and trains and running to public events and hanging around, and eating bacon and egg rolls over coffee. He sleeps in a separate room to his wife, has for years, and his play and film ideas don’t sound very appealing (eg a story about Beaconsfield with Paul Howes as the hero – didn’t Howes just hang around and go “there there” to the victims’ families? What about making it about the rescuers and the trapped miners.)