Henry Speagle ‘regrettably missed a first in classics’ and began his career as a teacher, first at St Peter’s College, Adelaide, and then at Christ Church Grammar at Claremont in Western Australia. In 1952 Dr James Darling, headmaster of Geelong Grammar, befriended him and effectively counselled him against a teaching career. He became a Commonwealth public servant, selected as ‘a generalist’ at a time when the service happily valued such people.
Speagle worked in the Repatriation Commission, the Department of the Navy and then the Australian Bureau of Statistics, where he edited the Victorian Year Book for 25 years. Editor’s Odyssey was written at the suggestion of former premier Sir Rupert Hamer. Geoffrey Blainey, a contemporary of Speagle’s at Melbourne University in the 1940s, wrote the foreword.
The Year Book was Speagle’s greatest claim to fame. As editor he emphasised quality, innovation and reliability. From all accounts he did a good job. After the publication of the 1973 edition, the Australian Library Journal observed that the Victorian effort was ‘hard to beat’, which, the author notes, ‘gave us all considerable cheer and heart’. The role of editor provided the launching pad for the ‘reminiscence of civil service’ in which the author eulogises a number of his personal heroes, who happen to be conservative politicians, public servants, even state governors like Dallas Brooks and Rowan ‘Jumbo’ Delacombe.
The author has a great admiration for the conservative establishment and one senses that he would be pleased to be recognised as part of it. The trappings are important. This is the first book I have read that begins with a glossary of ‘honours and awards referred to in this book (listed in order of precedence)’. There is hardly a pen portrait of a politician or senior public servant that does not conclude with a sentence such as, ‘He was awarded the AO after a previous OBE.’
Invited to a lunch at Government House, the author notes, ‘Never before have I felt more self-conscious: I was one of the few persons around the table who lacked a knighthood.’ On another occasion, presented to Princess Alexandra, he ‘succumbed to an attack of tongue-tied silence, which I am told is not unknown among devoted Royalists’.
There is, I think, no point in singling out particular individuals numbered among the author’s heroes. Most of them are public servants who served with distinction and integrity, and happily all ended up