Bruce Bennett AO was Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. A Rhodes scholar, he was a graduate of the Universities of Western Australia, Oxford and London and a Doctor of Letters from UNSW. He held visiting appointments at universities in Asia, Europe and North America. He was a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Bruce died in April 2012. His books include An Australian Compass (1991), Spirit in Exile: Peter Porter and His Poetry (1991), The Oxford Literary History of Australia (1998), Australian Short Fiction (2002), Homing In (2006) and The Spying Game: An Australian Angle (2012).