Books by David Furse-Roberts

From the Foreword:lt is clear that David Furse-Roberts has done a prodigious amount of work: researching, thinking, writing. It is hard to believe that he never met my father, or heard him speak. I wish he had.This book gives the reader a very good understanding of what Menzies was like, and what he thought. What it can''t do is make it possible to hear him, and feel the atmosphere when he spoke.Menzies had the ability to get and keep the attention of his audiences. He looked at them, spoke directly to them, somehow created a connection. He also knew how and when to make a light-hearted remark which reinforced the contact. Where did this skill come from? My father''s parents were determined that their children should be well educated and articulate. They would all sit around and take it in turns to read out loud. Their father could not tolerate any mistakes. so they were firmly corrected.When he was a schoolboy in Ballarat someone gave him a ticket to the South Street Competitions, an annual event for the performing arts. He went and sat in the middle of a row where he was hemmed in by very large ladies. He could see no way to escape. So he sat through 27 versions of "Friends. Romans, Countrymen", which taught him a lot about how NOT to speak in public. Those are the only specific things l can recall about how he learnt to speak in public, but the tact is he had strong thespian instincts. After he was made a Knight of the Thistle, Jim Cope called out in Parliament: "You should have got an Oscar, not a Thistle!" Jim was not a mile out.So, Menzies knew how to get the attention of his audience. but how did he know, so well, what to say?In Ballarat, still in Primary School, he and his sister lived with their Scottish grandmother. Her form of punishment was to make them learn great slabs of the Bible. That was augmented by his love of poetry and the Classics Later he won the Shakespeare Society prize, which involved learning hundreds of lines of the prescribed play.So there he was with a love of words and the English language, and a retentive brain. Those essentials were there. Then he could concentrate on the message he wanted to get across.In his own words: "When l had a big speech to make in the House, l would begin by making brief notes merely as a reminder to me as to what my line of argument was to be and relying upon the moment to produce the words in which l would clothe the ideas. The night before the speech l read poetry because great poetry gives one a sense of the weight and quality of words which perhaps no other reading can do."Reading this book, I am constantly surprised and impressed that David Furse-Roberts has the skill and tenacity to find so many appropriate quotes from Menzies. lt seems to me he has a magic wand somewhere. We are much in his debt.- Heather Henderson AM, September 2020

Simeon's magnum opus, his Horae Homileticae, famously contains the three questions by which Simeon hoped all his preaching would be judged: 'Does it uniformly tend to humble the sinner? To exalt the Saviour? To promote holiness?'The copy in Oxford's Bodleian library also contains this inscription: 'To the Chancellor and Scholars at Oxford for the Bodleian Library. A present from the Author in the humble hope, and with earnest prayer to God, that his efforts to diffuse the knowledge of Christ with all the wonders of Redeeming Love may not be in vain. Ch. Simeon, King's College Cambridge 1833'. In the essays which follow you will find ample evidence to conclude that his hope was realised and his prayers answered with a resounding 'yes'.'The essays in this little volume are a welcome addition to the steadily growing study of Simeon, his faith, his methods and his influence. That they should emerge from a conference in a small evangelical Anglican theological college on the other side of the world from Simeon's most direct arena of activity is a further testimony to his influence.'(Mark Thompson)The contributors are David Furse-Roberts, Edward Loane , Grant Maple, David Pettett, Craig Schwarze and James Snare, with a preface by Mark Thompson.