Through the watershed years of the latter half of the 1960s, Charmian Clift was a household name to many Australians. On Thursday mornings, thousands of men as well as women would go straight to the Women's Section when opening their morning newspapers. What they were looking for was the Clift column. Every week from November 1964 until July 1969, Clift produced approximately 1,200 words that challenged Australians to think in a new way. Her column was refreshing after the political climate of the 1950s and early 1960s, in which the country was dominated by the Cold War and the long-running conservative government of Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies. Clift herself had left that political situation in 1951 and spent a decade and a half in Europe. On her return in 1964 she was able to look at her homeland with a loving but critical eye.

Her concerns covered an extraordinary range of topics--including...