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On one view Ledger was nothing but a smuggler, robbing a Third World country of its natural inheritance on behalfofa rapacious imperialism.On another view he and his like brought benefit to a far greater part of mankind, which it would not have acquired otherwise-or not, at any rate, until a much later period.Villain or hero, however, his achievement is surely as undeniable as his life was ultimately a tragedy.A book with two parallel themes poses structural problems and the author has solved these not altogether satisfactorily.Like many biographers, too, he has been relectant to jettison any of his hard-won facts and has produced a narrative that is over-detailed.More seriously, and eccentrically for a scholarly work, the references are not keyed to individual statements, even in the case of manuscript material.A fold-out family tree and fifteen pages of colour plates, reproductions of watercolours by Santiago Savage in Ledger's diary of his alpaca enterprise, now in the Mitchell Library at Sydney, help to justify the very high price, which all the same seems excessive for a book which is capable of attracting a by no means narrow readership.
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