Historian, avid novelist and political commentator Ross Fitzgerald AM has his fingers and toes crossed that life will soon imitate art in the Russia-Ukraine war.
The emeritus professor at Brisbane’s Griffith University has co-written a series of political satires with Ian McFadyen, of TV’s Comedy Company fame.
The Lowest Depths, released late last year, is the eighth in the series, which centres around anti-hero Grafton Everest.
The plot involves – spoiler alert –dictatorial President Vladimir Putrid being assassinated.
As Fitzgerald told Strewth: “My favourite teacher at Melbourne High School Norton Hobson (who is the basis for Mr Horton – the …

 Contrasting Conservatives: Wilfred Kent Hughes and Keith Feiling

   by ROSS FITZGERALD and STEPHEN HOLT
Notoriously stubborn and abrasive, strongly anti-communist and for a time pro-fascist, Sir Wilfred Kent Hughes (1895 – 1970) had a long career in state and federal politics, most notably as a minister under Liberal Prime Minister, Robert Menzies. As an athlete and organiser, Kent Hughes also had a long-standing involvement with the Olympic movement. At the 1920 Antwerp Olympics he represented Australia in hurdling, and in 1956 he helped organise the Melbourne Olympics. 
   Noted for his conservative interpretation of the past …

CBD loves a multi-hyphenate. And none more so than Ross Andrew Fitzgerald AM, the academic, historian, novelist, secularist and political commentator.
Fitzgerald, an emeritus professor in history and politics at Griffith University, even though he lives in Redfern, Sydney, is the author and co-author of 43 books. His latest is one of a series of political/sexual satires about his corpulent anti-hero Grafton Everest, co-written with Ian McFadyen, of TV series Comedy Company fame.
The latest novel The Lowest Depths, released late last year, is set in Australia and Russia. During the course …

by Ross Fitzgerald & Ian McFadyen
Ross Fitzgerald writes: 
One of my favourite stories concerns two Liberal Party politicians, both of whom were later knighted. One of them was arguably Australia’s most hopeless and devious prime minister, William (“Billy”) McMahon. He was in office from March 1971 until December 1972, when the coalition lost office to Labor under Gough Whitlam – who had famously described McMahon as “Tiberius with a telephone.” The second was James (“Jim”) Killen, who liked more than an odd beer on a hot day and who had served …