Brian Fitzpatrick (1905-1965) was educated at state schools in regional Victoria and Melbourne before gaining his BA from Melbourne University in 1925. After completing his Master of Arts, in 1937 he won the university's Harbison Higinbotham Scholarship. His first book, British imperialism and Australia 1783-1833, was published in 1939 and was followed by numerous and now standard texts dealing with Australian politics, history, and economics. He was later appointed to a position of research fellow in history at Melbourne University. Having first worked as a journalist in the 1920s, by the 1940s Fitzpatrick was writing regularly for Smith's weekly and The Rationalist, broadcasting for radio 3XY in Melbourne and editing a number of other newsletters and political reviews. In 1935, he was one of the founding members of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, becoming its General Secretary in 1939, meeting his future wife, academic Dorothy Davies through the organisation and remaining committed to it for the rest of his life. Fitzpatrick is the subject of a biography by Don Watson - Brian Fitzpatrick: a radical life ( 1979), which outlines his efforts on behalf for humanitarian causes and his outspokenness on issues such as censorship and attempts to ban the Communist party.
