This event has been postponed due to COVID-19. If you are a ticket-holder, check your email for updates sent by Roaring Stories via Eventbrite.

‘Gideon Haigh is one of Australia’s most versatile and skilled historians.’ – Geoffrey Blainey

We are delighted to invite you to the launch of book which Roaring Stories is very excited to bring to Balmain – The Brilliant Boy by historian Gideon Haigh, a work shedding light on high court judge, Menzies opposition leader, and champion of a new Australia, Doc Evatt.

The book will be launched on Tuesday July 6 at White Bay Beer Company. Haigh will be joined in conversation on the book with renowned presenter Geraldine Doogue, sharing his unique take on a period of great change, confidence and audacity in the character of our nation. Tickets are available through Eventbrite.

The Brilliant Boy is released the following day, but copies will be available for purchase on the night through Roaring Stories Bookshop Balmain.

Attendees are asked to arrive at 6.30pm for a 7pm start at White Bay Beer Company, Balmain’s stunning, newly opened microbrewery. Seating is unallocated – another reason to arrive early to secure an optimal spot! The bar opens 6.30pm and closes at 9.30pm on the night of the event, making for an opportune time to grab a drink before or after.

Book signings from Haigh of The Brilliant Boy will follow discussion.

The event will also be livestreamed from the Live section of the Roaring Stories Facebook page, and available to view later as an upload on the Roaring Stories YouTube channel.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In a quiet Sydney street in 1937, a seven year-old immigrant boy drowned in a ditch that had filled with rain after being left unfenced by council workers. How the law should deal with the trauma of the family’s loss was one of the most complex and controversial cases to reach Australia’s High Court, where it seized the imagination of its youngest and cleverest member.

These days, ‘Doc’ Evatt is remembered mainly as the hapless and divisive opposition leader during the long ascendancy of his great rival Sir Robert Menzies. Yet long before we spoke of ‘public intellectuals’, Evatt was one: a dashing advocate, an inspired jurist, an outspoken opinion maker, one of our first popular historians and the nation’s foremost champion of modern art. Through Evatt’s innovative and empathic decision in Chester v the Council of Waverley Municipality, which argued for the law to acknowledge inner suffering as it did physical injury, Gideon Haigh rediscovers the most brilliant Australian of his day, a patriot with a vision of his country charting its own path and being its own example – the same attitude he brought to being the only Australian president of the UN General Assembly, and instrumental in the foundation of Israel.

A feat of remarkable historical perception, deep research and masterful storytelling, The Brilliant Boy confirms Gideon Haigh as one of our finest writers of non-fiction. It shows Australia in a rare light, as a genuinely clever country prepared to contest big ideas and face the future confidently.

ABOUT GIDEON HAIGH

Gideon Haigh has been writing about sport, business, both and neither, for more than 30 years. His previous biography, On Warne, won the MCC/Cricket Society and the British Sports Book Awards prizes as the cricket book of the year. He lives in Melbourne.

ABOUT GERALDINE DOOGUE

Geraldine Doogue OA is a presenter for ABC RN Saturday Extra which specialises in foreign policy, regional issues, agenda-changing commentators and good books. Previously, she was a reporter for the West Australian, The Australian, 2UE, Channel 10 and the Presenter/Creator of ABC RN’s Life Matters. She has received a United Nations Media Peace Prize, two Penguin Awards, a Churchill Fellowship, and was admitted to the Australian Media Hall of Fame in 2018. She is the co-author of Tomorrow’s Islam and author of The Climb.

ABOUT WHITE BAY BEER CO

White Bay Beer Company will be the Balmain peninsula’s first microbrewery, a welcoming ‘working classy’ space located in a huge renovated 150-year-old steel mill. The venue is fully accessible, and with an open bar before, during and after the event. Entry signage will be clearly visible on the night of the event, with street parking in the surrounding area and bus stops nearby.

This event is presented by Roaring Stories Bookshop Balmain with Simon & Schuster

With thanks to our venue partner White Bay Beer Co