Larrikinland

There is no higher praise in Australian life than to be called a larrikin. All our greatest cultural icons, from Shane Warne to Steve Irwin to Scott Cam to Dawn Fraser and now Sam Kerr, are granted elite status by having the term "larrikin" bestowed upon them. Those of our great and good who do not qualify as larrikins yearn to do so, and politicians will expend enormous effort and expense to play up their larrikinesque qualities in the hopes of being tagged with the most holy of epithets.

Larrikinland examines the larrikin phenomenon from start to finish - well, as close to the finish as we've gotten so far, anyway. It's a book about language, culture and history, and about how the past and the present are always talking to each other. With his trademark humour, Ben Pobjie does a deep dive into the world of larrikins, from the origins of the term in England, to the adoption of it as a pejorative for the undesirables of colonial Australia, to its evolution into a label for Aussie royalty.