The title of Robert Gray's autobiography is drawn from a poem by the famous Australian poet Christopher Brennan, ‘The land I came thro’ last was dumb with night / a limbo of defeated glory, a ghost’. There is more glory than defeat in this work, though, the memoir of a writer who is, in turn, one of Australia’s best-known living poets. Although Gray is necessarily present throughout, the personal element is subdued – it is on others that the focus always falls, and on his parents most of all. Their struggle with defeated expectation and finally with old age closes the book. The Land I Came Through Last is ultimately a tribute to their strengths and weaknesses, and their very different personalities.