The usual routine of book launches is for a friend/mate/debtor of the author to stump up and say nice words, often without checking the title or contents, often to be painfully surprised that an old school mate has written an expose of the Freemason-UFO conspiracy.

So one wonders what was going through the mind of professional Kevin Rudd lookalike Glyn Davis (Rudd chooses his staff as a way of assembling body doubles in case of future assassination attempts) when he launched Paul Monk’s work on the virtues of the West last night.

Published by Barrailler Books, a sort of military semi-vanity press — titles including “Sonnets To a Promiscuous Beauty” a reflection on the Western canon by, erm, Paul Monk, and the Zapf Chancery cover font are a dead give-away — Monk’s tome boldly argues (in an extract in the Oz) that ‘freedom, political and intellectual, was invented by the Ancient Greeks’. The word s-s-s-lavery is unmentioned.

The book’s title? Freedom In A Nutshell. In Zapf Chancery.