At the very moment the federal Liberal party was having another debate over leadership I happened to be launching a book about one of the party’s founding fathers, Sir Joseph Carruthers.

Written by young historian Dr Zachary Gorman and reviewed in this magazine by Chris Berg earlier this year, the book is a rare specimen of modern historical writing, daring to paint an early-colonial figure in a positive light, against the prevailing intellectual fad of erasing history and tearing down statues.