Old artists usually have personality. Persona, however, is something no artist should ever keep.
Persona always kills.
My first reaction was to wish that Forbes' fervour for politics had been reciprocated by good politicians. The NSW Premier Jack Lang once arranged that the drunken Henry Lawson be subsidised to live in the Riverina Prohibition area. Forbes once told me he would 'walk across broken glass' for a job at a university. Somewhere to think, write and work quietly and seriously. If Sydney University hadn't sacked Christopher Brennan, Brennan would simply have written much longer and much better.