Ita Buttrose is a consequential figure in Australian public life for many reasons, most of all because of her work as a journalist, so it is odd that only one chapter of her memoir Unapologetically Ita is wholly devoted to this.
The rest is a collection of essays, written in a somewhat hortatory tone, on personal resilience, menopause, ageing, dementia, HIV, motherhood, leadership, and the opportunities and challenges facing Australia.
The book is written, not always coherently, in the language of magazine journalism: a mixture of reportage and opinion. In the middle of a discussion about HIV/AIDS and the subsequent risk that gay people would retreat back into the closet, for example, Buttrose inserts an anecdote about how the Herald Sun and the 60 Minutes television program focused on her revelation that she had become a radical celibate. The connection to gay people’s lives is not obvious.
