Biography & Memoir
Eminent persons, exemplary lives, significant scholars and scandalous scallywags
may be discovered and disclosed when a biography is commissioned!
Published biographies and personal memoirs are arguably the most popular form of non-fiction sold in Australia today. We want to read about someone else’s life! Historical biographies and memoirs research, document, analyse and interpret the events in a person’s life. They often make connections between people and events; can sometimes explain the meaning of unexpected actions or mysteries, and proffer arguments about the person’s life and accomplishments. Written thematically or chronologically, biographies and memoirs shed light on a particular person within the context of their time and place in history.
Leslie Latham: A Biography (forthcoming 2010)
Admired by his family, friends, colleagues and peers alike, Leslie Latham (1879-1950) excelled as a Physician in Melbourne for 30 years. When he retired he had more time to indulge his passions – tennis with friends and family, walking with the Wallaby Club and discussions of the classics, literature, poetry and politics with fellow members of the Boobooks Club. Sometimes overshadowed by his older brother, Attorney-General and politician, Sir John Latham, Les Latham was an amiable man of quiet determination.
Commissioned to celebrate the exemplary life of Les Latham, Hindsight’s biography explores the heritage of the Latham family in order to understand the drive for order and goodness in the world, and the aims exhibited in contrasting forms by both Les and his brother John – both prominent public figures. After graduating BA in 1900 Latham embarked on a medical course, (MD 1907) he went into general practice in Ivanhoe before being appointed honorary physician to inpatients at St Vincent’s Hospital. He served as a major in the Australian Army Medical Corps during World War 1 before returning to consulting at St Vincent’s where he remained until his retirement in 1936. Latham’s devoutly Methodists parents encouraged their children – four sons and a daughter – to make their way ‘by industry and high moral purpose’. It is no surprise that Latham was a committee man. He served on many Melbourne based committees including the councils of the University of Melbourne, Scotch College, the British Medical Association, Victoria and Medical Defence Association Victoria to name but a few.
