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'How are the Egyptians Behaving?'
The Life and Times of Herbert Brookes
A public lecture by Peter Cochrane

National Library Conference Room, Tuesday 23 July 1996, 5.30 pm


Herbert Brookes figures in some history books as a militant Protestant and fierce British loyalist, in others as the brother of Norman the tennis player or son-in-law of Alfred Deakin. He was much more than this. In a public life over half a century he flirted with radical egalitarianism, carried the social gospel into remote mining communities, was a leader of the Australian Natives Association and later a founder of the first Liberal Party. He was Deakin's right hand man for a time, a spokesman for Victorian manufacturers and a fiery pro-conscriptionist. He became a passionate empire conservative, deeply concerned about threats to the empire from within, thus his interest in the Egyptians. But his main fear was of Irish Catholicism. His opposition to it became an obsession. This paper will focus on his passion, his Protestantism and his sense of public duty, on how these were formulated in relation to the idea of God, Darwinism, capitalism and the meaning of Britishness.

Dr Cochrane, who is a 1996 Harold White Fellow at the National Library, is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Sydney. His last book was Simpson and the Donkey: the Making of a Legend. He is currently writing a history of the British-Australians.


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