Fighting for the lady

THE title of this biography could hardly be more provocative. ThomasKeneally, an Australian writer, is unapologetic. In labelling a hero of the American civil war a notorious scoundrel he switches the spotlight from the braveactions of Dan Sickles at the battle of Gettysburg to his earlier premeditated murder in Washington, DC, of the lover of his young and pretty Italian-American wife, Teresa. It is not the murder itself that disgusts Mr Keneally but Sickles's treatment of his wife afterwards, and how his behaviour mirrored the hypocriticalmisogyny of 19th-century America.