Just as Bob Ellis's One Hundred Days of Summer, about Tony Abbott's ascension to the Liberal leadership, was ready to hit the shelves, the nation was stunned to witness Labor suddenly call time on Kevin Rudd's Prime MInistership and replace him with Julia Gillard. Such political turbulence couldn't remain unexamined by this restless observer of our times. Ellis watches in horror as his beloved Labor lurches from miscalculated announcement to egregious strategic error in the ensuing federal election campaign, threatening to lose government after one calamitous term to the hard-right charmer Abbott. When the rural independents swung their support behind Gillard, Ellis was there, chatting to them between the closed-door meetings that decided the government. Suddenly, Last Winter is another diary of an extraordinary period in Australian political history, as ever combining Ellis's insider understanding with caustic wit.