Successful businessman by any yardstick, Robert Brooks was one of the leaders of trade between Britain and Australia from the 1820s to the 1870s. He was active in all its sectors - shipping, commerce, finance, banking, investment, migration.

Brooks was the influential and longest-serving founding director of the Union Bank of Australia and one of the largest importers of wool in London. He managed his manifold business interests from a City counting-house with a handful of clerks, having only once ventured to Australia.

This dynamic and innovative business biography looks afresh at the economic relationship between Britain and Australia. It breaks new ground in systematically studying the wool trade, the sailing-ship industry, Australia's import trade, the rise of the City of London and the financial services sector of the British economy, the relationship between business and government, private merchant financing and the connection between corporate and private finance.

Parallels between Brooks' career and fluctuations of the Australian trade and economy are striking. And we are reminded that business history must take account of the interests and personality of its leaders. The success of this boy from a Lincolnshire village rested on hard work, caution, flexibility, good personal relations, uncompromising standards, attention to detail and intensive communication with agents.

There is much to learn from Frank Broeze's major contribution to Australian and British economic, financial and maritime history.