Friday essay: Don Watson’s book on Paul Keating ended their friendship – is it our best ever political memoir?
Speechwriter Don Watson’s insider account of the prime minister he worked for, written ‘in tragic mode’, was an instant bestseller – but Keating famously hated it.
Paul Keating, Australia's former Prime Minister, never penned a memoir of his own. He had a history of controversial relationships with publishers and journalists who attempted to write about his political contributions. The most notable memoir of Keating was written by his former speechwriter, Don Watson. Published in 2002, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM was an instant bestseller.
However, Keating was furious with the book's content, considering it a betrayal of his trust. In the 1970s, Graham Freudenberg published A Certain Grandeur, a biography of Gough Whitlam that offered a high-level account of the political and economic forces that had influenced Whitlam's administration. Unlike Freudenberg, Watson did not keep his distance from Keating's experiences, instead weaving personal anecdotes and emotions into his narrative, making it a groundbreaking political memoir.
Written by urgent.news from The Conversation AU's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
