Andrew Tink
Lord Sydney: The Life and Times of Tommy Townshend
315pp, soft cover, 245 x 160mm
Selected New Title
Australian: $39.95 (Approx. US $42, Euro €32)
ISBN 9781921875434
Worldwide 7 - 10 days, Australia 3 - 7 business days
About the Book
Our selected new title is Andrew Tink's fine new biography of Lord Sydney, promoter of the 1788 settlement of New South Wales and the man for whom our city was named. Andrew Tink spent nineteen years in the New South Wales Parliament, including eleven as a Shadow Minister and three as Shadow Leader of the House. Had he stayed on he would now be in government of course, but he chose to step down in 2007 to concentrate on his writing. He is a politician who can write; and he understands history better than most. Politicians ought to be good at history (otherwise, as we know, they will be condemned to repeat it) but not that many are, and we think none in recent times has dug quite as deeply as Andrew. Those who read his last book on William Charles Wentworth will already know of his capacity for detailed research and his ability to explain complex details of political alliances and circles of friendship and influence. His new biography of Sydney is a current selected new title, and can be ordered from our website. The English statesman Thomas Townshend, widely known as Tommy Townshend, eventually Baron and later Viscount Sydney, was the most significant of the proponents of the plan to send the First Fleet to Botany Bay, and the man for whom Sydney Cove was named by Governor Phillip. As Home Secretary in Pitt's government Sydney was the first to announce George III's decision to send out the First Fleet in August 1786. He was directly responsible for the choice of Phillip to command the fleet and to be the colony's first governor. He took an enlightened view to the penal settlement, and much of the philosophy of government practised by Governor Phillip can be attributed to his influence. Sydney's influence as Home Secretary was considerable, all the more remarkable given the slender resources at his disposal. With a total of just 17 staff, including the doorman and a housekeeper, he administered British affairs across the globe. At least three settlements were named in his honour: the colony at Port Jackson, Sydney Town on Norfolk Island and another township in Nova Scotia, so called by grateful loyalists after their champion. Sydney's reputation as a competent administrator was challenged by Manning Clark, but more recent historians have done much to rehabilitate him. Andrew Tink's biography redresses the balance by offering us a comprehensive insight into Sydney in the context of the difficult political environment of late eighteenth-century Britain. Importantly, this new appraisal demonstrates the close relationship between Sydney and Phillip, and the importance of his influence in the establishment of a penal colony based upon rational and humane principles.