Bruce Stafford

Bruce Stafford is an Australian writer and family historian based in Charlton, Victoria. For many years, he has researched the lives of ordinary people whose stories survive only in scattered records, family memories and forgotten newspaper columns.

His work draws on historical newspapers, court records, shipping lists, electoral rolls and archival material. He is particularly interested in the point at which the official record falls silent—and in how carefully written historical fiction can restore the human texture of a life without pretending that imagination is fact.

Do Your Damnedest grew from his research into the life of his twice-great-grandfather, James Kirkwood, an obscure Tasmanian gardener who, in 1907, found himself in court against one of Australia’s most colourful politicians. What began as a family-history question became a wider story about power, conscience, reputation and the courage of an ordinary man to stand by his word.

Bruce’s writing is guided by a simple belief: family history is not merely a collection of names and dates, but the recovery of lives.