The twenty-three political, historical and legal specialists who contribute the essays endorse Cavalier’s point – even if some incumbents are found to fall short of esteem, such as Sir Charles Fitzroy (no. 10; J.K. McLaughlin), whose record pretty much confirms John Dunmore Lang’s first impression of him as ‘effete and incapable’. Diverse ‘personalities’ negotiate the evolving manners and modes of public authority, including Earl Beauchamp (no. 20), who later, as Graham Freudenberg relates, prompted George V’s aside that ‘I thought buggers like that always shot themselves’, and who provided inspiration for the Flyte family in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. But there is still an overarching question. What characterises the kind of personage best suited to sit above a system of parliamentary government that, as the New South Wales case amply demonstrates, is not always self-correcting? However circumscribed the exercise of viceregal responsibilities may have become, they remain – so David Clune and Ken Turner remind us – ‘dormant authority’, and the historical account indicates neither term can be taken for granted.

Each governor sought to find his own balance of the ‘three C’s’ formulated by Sir David Martin (no. 34; Ian Hancock): ‘ceremonial, constitutional, community.’ In procession they map out a range of themes, from the increasing attention the British brought to matters of running a modern empire to the persistence of the colonial cringe in setting standards in ‘society’. Prior to the introduction of measures which restricted their autocratic dominance, the governors – up to the 1830s, naval and military figures of considerable experience in command – achieved (the editors endorse John Hirst) ‘an amazing record of statecraft’. The coming of responsible government in 1856 inevitably set an office then held by a mix of seasoned civilian ‘professionals’ on a more narrow path, a drift subsequently confirmed in recourse to aristocratic appointments. If increasingly skilled politicians sought to corral the royal representative into roles and utterances ‘parochial, predictable and bland’, a sense of due process still allowed them some capacity for influence beyond the philanthropic. From the 1860s several governors debated with premiers keen to ‘swamp’ the appointed ranks of the Legislative Council with members suited to their own policies. In 1930 this process culminated in Jack Lang’s demand for an extra eighty members from Sir Phillip Game (no. 26; Anne Twomey), in an attempt to secure the Council’s abolition. As Gareth Griffith notes of Sir John Young (no. 12), governors endured the practical absurdity of their ‘independent discretion’ not to act on their premier’s advice while at least questioning political practices that flourished in circles of ‘floating discontent’ and ‘transient connection’.

But if governors sometimes showed themselves out of accord with the raw energy of local politics, they nonetheless saw national potential. Even the remote earl of Belmore (no. 13; Neil Graham) was one of several who argued for Federation and expressed alarm at environmental degradation, in his case supporting the study of agricultural science. Well-seasoned in Asian and Caribbean postings, Sir Hercules Robinson (no. 14, and a very different figure for Graham) demanded that politicians ‘stop wasting time’ in areas such an administration and education, and dismissed as ‘preposterous’ requests from German and American representatives to be consulted on the expansion of British interests in the Pacific. Domains of political initiative could be defined by governors. Yet it took ‘extraordinary pressure’ from Premier McKell to secure the appointment of the first Australian (Sir John Northcott, no. 30; Chris Cunneen) to the post in 1946 – a move which, while popular, roped the office more tightly into a restricted domain of ‘ceremony’ – and it was not until 1981 that Sir James Rowland (no. 33; Evan Williams) replaced the Union Jack with the state flag above the parapets of Government House.

Overall, the most significant actions of the governors came down to political judgement, not of ‘constitution’, and in such moments they stood largely alone. This was as much the case with no. 1, Arthur Phillip (Andrew Tink), who contended with extreme isolation, as it was for Sir Gerald Strickland (no. 23, the only Catholic and the only governor who was recalled), whose position, as Michael Hogan suggests, was less valuable to those back ‘Home’ than the preservation of a pro-conscription government during World War I. It continues to be the case for the most recent appointees: stripped of the trappings of privilege, they still seek to define the causes that matter to them and their society, such as Marie Bashir’s (the current incumbent and the only woman; Clune and Turner) support for causes of reconciliation and gay and lesbian welfare.

The authors account well for the political complexities that lie behind at least the first two ‘C’s’, and this book is essentially an evaluation of the balances struck. Frank Bongiorno offers an astute assessment of Sir Richard Bourke (no. 8), who attended to the ‘British world’ of imperial service in which the Australian experiment took its place, and in which, for Bourke and several successors, experience of Ireland meant that New South Wales might become ‘something other than an inferior model of England’. The dour resignation of Sir George Gipps (no. 9; Alan Ventress) to the expansion of pastoralism echoes still, and Geoffrey Bolton wryly underscores other continuities by noting Sir Augustus Loftus’s (no. 15) complaints about the influx of ‘boat people’ from New Caledonia and his urging of troops to the Sudan, to ‘stand by great and powerful allies’.

With a Victoria Cross and war wounds, Sir Roden Cutler (no. 32) might have been ‘virtually unassailable’ during his record fifteen years in office, but Ian Hancock’s affectionate portrait still judges him ‘naïve, slippery or just dense’ in assuming that his comments on national service in 1971 could be kept above politics. In contrast, Rowland, by consciously reading through his papers, could discreetly expose the corruption that ultimately led to the imprisonment of his minister for corrective services, Rex Jackson. Ironically, it is perhaps the most politically effectual governor, Game (who dismissed Jack Lang) who most despaired of his position: ‘I wish I were an economist and statesman, to turn Lang’s undoubted leadership and powers into the right channels. But one is so ignorant.’ Up to 1932 Game had lamely determined ‘to sit tight and say nuffin’.

While some authors indulge a little in the archaic ‘backwards and forwards’ of colonial etiquette and legalism, each essay rescues their subject from the ‘dead letters’ of gubernatorial pomp. Implicitly, but probably intentionally, this handsomely produced book leaves unresolved the question at the heart of republican sentiment: what should be the powers of ‘the personification of the nation’ and the means of securing someone to trust with them? At a time when such figures are more than even looked to for a fourth ‘C’ – (conspicuous) compassion – the third ‘C’ – community – is perhaps the least effectively explored here. Each governor is seen to have his routine charities and causes, and the wives are rather perfunctorily assessed in terms of handling a role equivalent to that attributed to Lady Rawson (wife of no. 21) as a ‘piece of Empire cement’. In general, however, the networks beyond the governors remain anonymous. They mingle with ‘society’ and ‘élites’, but there is little sense of the composition of those bodies or of how they evolved beyond mere ‘charitable and other good works’.

This is a pity: the changing currents of benevolence, philanthropy and welfare might have been effectively examined through viceregal patronage and style. The book concludes with Bashir as patron of ‘316 organisations’, but ‘community’ overall remains a poor relation to ‘constitution’ and ‘ceremony’. When the second in line to the British throne, on a fond but brief visit, was observed to move among a ‘thrilled’ crowd in Redfern on 19 January and to ‘really listen, just like his mum’, we have a hint that there is still a way to go in finding a national equivalent to ‘Empire cement’.