Robert Lehane
Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2017 ISBN 9781925588484
Canberra’s population was only about 10,000 when, in 1938, the newly married Verity Fitzhardinge opened Verity Hewitt’s bookshop, for decades a favoured haunt of Canberra booklovers. Verity had come to the fledgling capital as a 21-year-old in 1930 to teach at Telopea Park School (Gough Whitlam was a fondly remembered pupil). In letters to her future husband, Billy Hughes’s biographer Laurie Fitzhardinge, she painted a fascinating picture of Depression-era Canberra. Those letters are part of the rich collection of correspondence and diaries that this book taps to tell the story of Verity’s ‘vigorous, interesting and kindly’ life - one admirer’s apt description - as teacher, bookseller, farmer, historian, intrepid traveler, activist and writer.