Ian Britain’s intense scholarly scrutiny of the artist Donald Friend’s early life is more than interesting. Beautifully presented, lavishly illustrated, the book delights. Britain notes in his introduction that he reviewed volume three of Friend’s diaries for the Australian Book Review in 2005 and then read the two earlier volumes. He edited a selection from the diaries published in 2010.
Of course, the question of paedophilia immediately arises. Britain discusses the “obloquy that Friend’s name would come to attract” following the fourth
