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Margaret Glass, Charles Cameron Kingston: Federation Father (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997), 247 pp., $34.95, ISBN 0 522 847781 1.
For most of our first century Australians have neglected the history of their federation, and this is in part responsible for the way in which the centenary celebrations have such low visibility compared with the Olympics and the millennium. The federal story is neither boring nor predictable, and it has a multitude of extraordinary and interesting characters to bring it alive. Fortunately this is now being recognised, and as well as recently published and planned general histories and the appearance of a dedicated federation history journal, the lives and careers of the nation-makers are finally being given some attention.
Among the more significant figures (Barton, Deakin, Reid, Forrest, Griffith, Inglis Clark) that of Charles Cameron Kingston (1850-1908), the South Australian radical democrat, stands out...