Fifteen years ago, on Christmas Day 1980, I wrote a list of four people whose biography, if I had the time and ability, I would like to write. They were as follows: Queensland premier and federal treasurer, E.G. (‘Red Ted’) Theodore; Australia's only Communist member of Parliament, Fred Paterson; New Zealand born Communist and author of the superb social realist novel Sugar Heaven, Jean Devanny; and that remarkable American observer of Australia, Clinton Hartley Grattan.