The Literary Larrikin : A Critical Biography of T.A.G. Hungerford

"Literary Larrikin" is the colourful life story of T.

A. G. Hungerford, the last grand old man of Australian literature.

The author of four major novels, a short-story writer par excellence and a poet, Hungerford has also been a soldier and traveller.

As well as recounting the events of his life, this book is interspersed with serious discussion of his contribution to Australian literature.

Hungerford's best-known work, "The Ridge and the River", is among the most significant novels of World War II and one of the most vivid accounts of fighting men ever written.

It is closely related to his own experiences as a member of an Australian commando unit based on Bougainville.

His idyllic childhood in South Perth with his genteel but impoverished parents and three exuberant siblings is described in Stories from Suburban Road.

As well as sensitively evoking a time and place, this collection of stories and its sequels have secured his place in the Australian literary canon.

This biography also takes an in-depth look at Tom Hungerford the man, the archetypal bachelor of the post-war years. He represents the Australia of yesteryear, when the country still retained a certain innocence and his native Perth was just a big country town.