Australian biographer and literary historian (1944–2021)
Philip James AyresOAM (28 July 1944 – 15 August 2021)[1] was an Australian biographer and literary historian, described by High Court JusticeDyson Heydon as "one of the best biographers this country has ever produced".[2]
Ayres' biography subjects includedMalcolm Fraser,[4]Douglas Mawson,[5] former Australian Chief Justice SirOwen Dixon,[6] Sydney's late-19th-century, early-20th-century Catholic ArchbishopPatrick Francis Moran[7] and SirNinian Stephen[8] (who had been Australia's Governor-General for most of the 1980s). His last book, a collection of biographical vignettes built around personal one-on-one encounters with numerous internationally significant people quite aside from the subjects of his biographies, wasPrivate Encounters in the Public World.[9]
His literary-historical books includeClassical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England.[10] According toWorldCat, the book is held in 398 libraries.[11] He was the editor of the two-volumeClarendon Press edition ofShaftesbury's Characteristicks.[12]
The BritishLaw Quarterly Review described his Owen Dixon as a "conspicuous success" in marrying "distinguished scholarship and narrative skills",[13] while theAustralian Law Journal devoted a 14-page section to complimentary analyses of the same book.[14]Fortunate Voyager, the account of Sir Ninian Stephen's life, displays similar research and narrative methodologies. The other biographies have also received generally excellent reviews in the relevant professional journals,[15] although the author has been chastised by one (clerical) critic for declining to moralise his avowedly non-moral and objectivist presentation of character.[16]
He also wrote first-hand accounts of several conflict zones, having travelled with Malcolm Fraser in South Africa (1986)[17] andSomalia (1992),[18] and with theHezb-i-Islami jihadists inAfghanistan in 1987.[19]
The lists below of learned articles and book reviews are representative of published works too extensive to be noticed here.
^(2003) 77Australian Law Journal, 682-696 (High Court Centenary number).
^Mawson: its "high level of research and carefully crafted writing make it a worthy addition to Australian scientific biography"—Brigid Hains,Historical Records of Australian Science, 13, ii (2000), 226-228; see also Rod Beecham inAustralian Book Review, June/July 2004, p. 35: "Ayres's great virtue as a biographer is his scrupulous reliance on primary sources, which he has researched meticulously. He can also be funny."
^Frank Brennan, "Tales from the Bench",Eureka Street, July/August 2003, 37-39.
^"South African Diary", final chapter of Ayres, Malcolm Fraser.
^Quadrant, vol. 36, no. 12, December 1992, pp. 9-14.
^"Khost: The Crucial Siege",The Age, Saturday Extra, 28 November 1987, pp. 1-6.
