Australian ambiences. The word milieu might do almost as well; there is a convergence between the dictionary definitions of the two words. But I’ve chosen ambience not only because of its alliteration with Australia; in it there‘s also a greater element of personal agency. Somebody is doing the ambulating, moving about, giving the milieu a focus by their activity. A milieu first requires an examination of its ingredients, whereas ambience is a word that almost clamours for a biographical approach.

The present period has sometimes been called the golden age of biography. We can speculate as to why this should be so: there’s often more diligent research, leavened by a post-Freudian frankness about personal and sex lives. But there are also one or two other factors that can be overlooked. One is that academic historians have, generally speaking, renounced narrative in favour of analysis—and are increasingly being prompted, by managers, to renounce the book in favour of the learned article. Biography, it could be argued, has stepped into the gap. Moreover, biography has readily attracted a readership because, as the lives of many seem more segmented by various postmodern forces, there is something attractive in becoming familiar with another life in all its apparent completeness. Past lives have a roundedness and discernible shape that our own lives rarely have.