Lloyd Maxwell Ross worked as a teacher, writer, trade unionist, journalist, public servant and historian. He was born in Brisbane on 28 February 1901. He was a student at Melbourne University in 1920-1925 and in 1925 joined the staff of the new student newspaper Farrago and in the same year was an inaugural member of the Melbourne University Labor Club. From 1931-1932 Ross was a tutor-organiser in adult education with the Worker’s Educational Association (WEA) and lecturer in Economic History in Dunedin, New Zealand. Returning to Australia he became district tutor in Newcastle for Sydney University in 1933; acting assistant director of tutorial classes in 1934 and in the same year he was elected New South Wales Secretary of the Australian Railways Union (ARU). Ross was State Secretary of the ARU New South Wales Branch from 1935-1943. In the period 1943-1949 he was Director of Public Relations in the Department of Post War Reconstruction and followed this with three years as the industrial writer for the Herald, Melbourne. In 1952 Ross returned to the ARU to begin a second term as Secretary of the New South Wales Branch and retired from this position in 1969. His biography of John Curtin which he had commenced almost thirty years earlier was published in 1977 by Macmillan. Lloyd Ross died on 7 September 1987.