Banjo Paterson’s ballads are as fresh and alive today as they were one hundred years ago. This lively selection of poetry and prose brings together all the old classics along with the not-so-well-known and the off-beat: a prose account of an illegal dog fight in the Botany sandhills; bungling British officers at the Boer War, and Paterson addressing a barmaid in verse on the prospects - or otherwise - of 7/4 favourites.

Richard Hall’s deeply researched introduction gives us a biographical picture of Paterson quite unlike that which some have tried to promote of a conservative squatter’s mouthpiece. This Banjo is tough-minded and sceptical, and the modern reader will gain a new appreciation of some of Australia’s favourite literature.

‘.brings a new and fresh understanding of Banjo, the man. Tragic as it is that his great talents were never adequately rewarded financially, this very fact may have contributed to his earthiness and his empathy with the common man.’ - John Tapp