David Solomon 1, Tom Hughes 0

March 23, 2026

Thank you, Andrew Fraser, for tickling the old memory bank.

As a very young junior member of staff at the National Library, I was tasked to take and manage the NLA’s bound copies of the Canberra Times to Court in the Gorton defamation case – nothing less than originals was acceptable.

Barrister for the plaintiff was Tom Hughes QC – a man whose pomposity exceeded even the best of Charles Laughton in full flight. Hughes played the gallery shamelessly, with palpable arrogance.

David Solomon in the witness stand; Hughes leaned forward, his robe and QC dribble-bibble swinging in the breeze, like a vampire on the hunt. Put to Solomon a ‘gotcha’ question, stood back, pushed his glasses that he had lowered in glaring attack on the witness back up his nose, grasped his lapels and turned to view the gallery with ineffable smugness.

Solomon leaned forwards, pushed his own glasses down his nose in superb parody of Hughes’s action, said: ‘NO’, leaned back, replaced his glasses, grasped his lapels and then turned to view the gallery with the exact smugness of his predecessor.

The mockery of the pompous idiot Hughes was utterly, deliciously complete.

Viva David Solomon.