A Grand Disrobing. "Bob Carr: The Reluctant Leader" by Marilyn Dodkin. [review]

Abstract

Over the past few years, Bob Carr has been tweaking the veils that shroud his inner self. In essays, speeches and book reviews, he has teased and titillated us with glimpses of his diary and extracts from his unpublished autobiographical novel, "Titanic Forces". Now, with Marilyn Dodkin’s "Bob Carr: The Reluctant Leader", built around Carr’s personal diary, we have a grand disrobing. Although she has used Hansard reports, newspaper files and interviews, there would be no publishable work without the diary, quotations from which average two per page. But what a revelation it all is, providing an intimate insight into the personality of the diarist, something rarely provided in political autobiography and missing frequently in authorised political biographies.