The thematic approach serves his purpose well – a focus on high politics, ideas and policy, the processes necessary to pursue them, and what he learned in their service. The method is to flag a governing idea – race, justice, cooperation, conflict resolution, for instance – then to explain why he first became preoccupied by it, all of the ways he pursued it through a succession of different roles, usually with illustrative case studies (and entertaining anecdotes about key figures and occasionally his own mistakes), and concluding with an itemised list of lessons to be drawn from his experience. This is the manifesto of a policy activist of a high order.

This summary does not do justice to how successfully Evans deploys this approach. An instance is Evans’s account of the way in which he collaborated with and orchestrated international actors in facilitating the Cambodian peace settlement (1989–91). An academic industry has been generated by some of the ideas for which Evans and those with whom he worked were catalysts, such as the new international relations norm of R2P, ‘the responsibility to protect’ – the obligation on the United Nations and other states to intervene, breaching a single state’s sovereignty – to prevent genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. R2P is endlessly debated and elaborated, but no one explains it with the concision, passion, and conviction of Evans.

Equally, others, such as war historian and nuclear analyst Robert O’Neill, have provided compelling accounts of the dimensions of the nuclear weapons problem we face, but perhaps it needs someone of Evans’s visibility to shock us about the Damoclean sword above us, and insist that policy makers pursue disarmament. Yet it is hard to be persuaded of the case for optimism – that the potential for mistakes and knowledge that any nuclear exchange at all would be catastrophic makes any strategic nuclear deployment rationally untenable – in current circumstances. Here, Donald Trump becomes a problem: how can we count on what might be unthinkable for a rational person, given a leader consumed by delusional self-regard and pathological social dominance in confrontation with a fanatic like Kim Jong-un?

An impressive feature of Evans’s memoir is his account of political learning. We tend to overvalue strong leaders, solitary heroes who alone can solve our problems. It is salutary, then, to see Evans’s progression from the idealistic but opinionated and bumbling ‘solo flyer’ (his self-description in a 1980s interview with the late Graham Little) sacked from a dream job as attorney general (1983–84), to a man later able to orchestrate remarkable international coalitions of people with diverse skills able together to address some of the most intractable problems of international politics.

Gareth Evans, ALP Conference, Tasmania, 1986 (photograph by Rennie Ellis, State Library of Victoria)There is, in the final chapter, a lucid description of the nature of political life and the capacities it demands, an excellent summary of Hawke’s and Keating’s strengths as colleagues and leaders, and a persuasive argument as to why theirs became the ‘gold standard’ of cabinet government. It was, essentially, because each minister was trusted to do his or her job, and collectively they relied on argument rather than authority in reaching decisions.

Yet those seeking a straightforward account of life inside the Labor government, of party games or even of Evans’s life story will find this a lapidary work. It is mostly in here, the self-deprecatory accounts of his failures in his early portfolios, and especially the highpoints, such as Evans’s heroic role in the carriage of Mabo legislation in the Senate. But the reader must pay attention and connect the threads where they fall.

In that respect the account is fragmentary, with different elements of all of the above occurring and recurring in different ways under discrete themes. It is Evans’s way of keeping our attention on high politics, rather than on the way sausages are made. But this also – notwithstanding his acknowledgment of the quotidian imperatives of pre-selection battles, factional maneouvres, careerist opportunism, and constituents’ demands – allows him to avoid some of the less salutary elements of the story. Consequently, there is no mention, for instance, of his part in the disastrous transfer of Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot to the Labor Party in 1997. Such lapses are not germane to policy or idealism.

There is evidence aplenty that Evans can be quixotic, endlessly curious, humorous, engaging, generous, and good company, and such qualities are manifest in this book. Yet the accounts of his capacity for combative arrogance and volcanic rage will not dissipate, and his attempts to ameliorate such reports are a nagging subtext in the memoir. He suggests that such stories have been amplified through repetition, and refers repeatedly to instances of disproportionate ‘exuberance’, misinterpreted irony, misunderstood mischief, a degree of volatility when ‘heroically ambitious’ goals are thwarted and ‘Australian’ robustness in argument.

He suggests that three things are characteristic of successful politicians (and by implication, of himself): a blend of idealism and megalomania; a degree of self-belief well beyond the norm; and ‘a missing sensitivity gene’ to what others think. These were all points he first made in that interview with Graham Little (published in Speaking for Myself, 1988). Yes, one can immediately think of instances, and it excuses Evans’s excesses to some extent. But one could not have said that about Alfred Deakin, John Curtin, or Ben Chifley, and Evans’s greatest work was when megalomania was tamed and he learned to orchestrate others in distributed leadership.

Gareth Evans, 2017 (photograph by Stuart Hay, Australian National University, www.gevans.org)It goes to the question of egotism, which Evans admits then typically deflects with humour and self-deprecation. Yet it will not be submerged. It is manifest in the difference between Neal Blewett’s Cabinet Diary (1999) – he is always the dispassionate observer of those in the game in which he is involved – and Evans’s works, more attuned to how others react and relate to himself.

Again, Evans’s significance as foreign minister and activist on the world stage is self-evident, as are the élite networks with which he has productively engaged – we do not need their testimonials, but here they are. He cannot resist name-checking high-flying friends and every world figure with whom he has worked, and this is also the selection principle in his choice of photographs. He has the grace to concede that none of what has been done could have happened without the many who worked with him (not to mention the support of family and friends), but it is the celebrities who are identified, rarely the staffers, professionals, and public servants integral to his achievement.

There is in this, I suspect, something of what the Henry James biographer Leon Edel called a life myth. By this he meant not simply the artifice individuals exercise to impress others, but the self-affirming stories (with their insistent denial of hard truths), we tell ourselves. Evans would have none of his friend Graham Little’s ‘psychobabble’ as he here concedes. Yet his self-deprecatory humour and ‘exuberance’ may be a shield against recognising the hurt his arrogance and anger may have occasioned.

For all that, when the discussion gets serious, egotism is held in check and the intelligence, acuity, and considerable common sense of Evans’s analysis shines through. The memoir is at its most engaging in dealing with the confounding issues of international politics, notwithstanding its revelations about the domestic reform era of the 1980s and 1990s. If you read nothing else this year on matters like race, reconciliation, cooperation, weapons control, R2P, distributed leadership and how to do politics, read this.