Auchmuty: The Life of James Johnston Auchmuty.(Review)

Auchmuty: The Life of James Johnston Auchmuty, by Kenneth R. Dutton; Boombana Publications (Mount Nebo, Qld), 2000, $49.50.

THE LIFE of an Australian vice-chancellor would not seem the most promising subject for an enjoyable biography. Unless the author had the special skills of Anthony Trollope, the battles between the professoriate and the students or the interminable committee meetings would not ordinarily be the stuff of a good read. But James Auchmuty, first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Newcastle, was a most peculiar character. It is his peculiarities, many of them admirable, that make this biography by Kenneth Dutton immensely readable. It brings to life a restless, ambitious, somewhat aggressive personality who served as a spy for MI6, knew King Farouk, and unrelentingly demanded high standards from his new university in the Australian bush.

Anyone with links with Ulster will find in these pages messages occasionally written between the lines, allusions to the sectarian bitterness of Auchmuty's origins. His family originally derived from the Lowlands of Scotland. He often told the tale of how his first recorded progenitor was a monk who escaped from an abbey in Scotland to pursue a sexual escapade which founded the family. Subliminal message: don't deprive priests of sex, and come out of the metaphorical Roman Catholic abbeys to join the people.

In Ireland the Auchmutys did loyal service for the crown. A memorial tablet to Sir Samuel Auchmuty can still be seen in the deserved vastness of St Patrick's Anglican Cathedral in Dublin. Lachlan Macquarie, later Governor of New South Wales, fought under him and this fact sparked an interest by James Auchmuty in that equally egocentric Celt.

Son of a priest of the Church of Ireland, Auchmuty studied at Trinity College, Dublin. The life ahead seemed destined to lead either to the church or academe. When, in 1925, James met a young Vassar student from Detroit, Margaret Walters, he began a lifelong partnership with a woman who was his intellectual equal and a foil to his restless and often combative personality. They married in 1934. She quickly made it plain that wife of an archbishop she did not wish to be. So academe it was.

Auchmuty's professional discipline was history. But he took a keen interest in political affairs in the newly divided Ireland, even running (unsuccessfully) for one of the university seats in the parliament of the Irish Free State. When the Second World War came along, he volunteered for British military service but was rejected for poor eyesight. However, the Home Office soon found a much greater use for this clever and loyal academic. He was recruited into the British secret service. He became, in effect, one of the agents of Britain, reporting on wartime developments in neutral Ireland. Theirish authorities must have had some inkling of this. When Auchmuty took part in the visit of Jan Masaryk, representative of the Czech government in exile, the Taoiseach, de Valera, smelt pro-British sedition. He branded the young Auchmuty as one of the four most dangerous men in Ireland.

Auchmuty was eventually brought out of Ireland, where it was getting too hot for comfort. After the war he was sent to Cairo. Ostensibly he was employed as a professor of history. However, the clear implication of the book is that this was but a front, secured by the British Council, to permit Auchmuty to continue his security surveillance in a new and dangerous environment. It was at that time that Auchmuty became acquainted with King Farouk. When the King was ousted, Auchmuty, once again out of a job, was bundled out of Egypt and looking for something new to do. Somehow Australia turned up.