The media has been awash in recent days with commentary on the motivation and reaction to former Governor-General Sir John Kerr’s sacking of Gough Whitlam’s Labor Government 40 years ago.

Much of this has been triggered by The Dismissal: In the Queen’s Name, a new book by the Australian journalists Paul Kelly and Troy Bramston, which revisits those tumultous circumstances examining the time bomb which Kerr placed under his own future with his decision to summarily end the Whitlam administration in the most controversial manner.