In the Melbourne Age on 13 October 2001 Michael King reflected on the writing of biographies and wondered whether, in the case of modern examples of the genre, there was any meaningful distinction to be drawn between public and private lives. King did not say as much, but he seemed to be suggesting that there should be some limits to where a biographer should go. It is a question that every biographer has to face. And I suppose writers of autobiographies too, where no subject now seems screened off from public revelation.

In the case of my biography of Australia’s wartime prime minister John Curtin, I seem to recall being principally interested in the public life and had no sense at the beginning that I would be investigating in any depth the private man. That changed as soon as I began looking into his childhood. The police records, which had been kept from his official biographer, Lloyd Ross, exposed Curtin’s father as having suffered a burden of shame after being disgraced as a police constable: while on his rounds in Port Melbourne he fondled a female shop assistant. It was as a result of that incident that he was sent to Creswick, where the future prime minister was born. It was no idyllic rural childhood for Curtin, living with an irascible father who was now suffering from syphilis.