Donald (Richmond) Horne

Writer, academic, and arts administrator, born in Muswellbrook, Hunter Valley, New South Wales, SE Australia. He became associate professor of political science at the University of New South Wales in 1964 (emeritus, 1987). His best-known book is The Lucky Country (1964), the title of which has become a common Australian expression, used without the ironic sense originally intended. Other books include A History of the Australian People (1985), The Lucky Country Revisited (1987), Ideas for the Nation (1989), and A Compact for Australia (2001). He was editor of The Bulletin (1967–72), chairman of the Australia Council (1985–90), Chancellor of the University of Canberra, and chairman of the Ideas for Australia programme (from 1991). As a leading member of the Australian Republican Movement, he wrote The Coming Republic (1992) and The Public Culture (1994), which analyse societies and nation-states.

Professor Donald Horne (December 26, 1921 – September 8, 2005) was an Australian journalist, writer, social critic, and academic who became one of Australia's best known public intellectuals.

Horne published three novels and more then twenty volumes of history, memoir and political and cultural analysis.

Donald Horne's early life was recounted in the first volume of his memoirs The Education of Young Donald (1967). Horne worked for a number of Frank Packer's publications, first as a journalist for The Telegraph, then editor of the magazine Weekend, and later the periodical The Observer.

He became a professor of political science at the University of New South Wales.

He also worked on writing, arts and citizenship boards and was an executive member of the Australian Constitutional Commission.

Throughout his long career, he was unorthodox and independent-minded, without a consistent political allegiance.

Despite his academic career, he never completed his undergraduate degree, though he received four honorary doctorates.

He was named as one of Australia's living national treasures by the National Trust.