Before I became Director, I had thought that I would like to continue with some laboratory research and had made arrangements to have space in the Department of Microbiology. However, I found that if I were to be available whenever wanted for committee meetings and meetings with staff, I could not have the long breaks I needed for bench research. Further, I knew that I could not carry out laboratory work through research assistants or PhD students, without ‘getting my hands dirty’. The one PhD student that I had at the time I accepted the Directorship was Bob Blanden, who was completely independent and produced some excellent papers from his thesis material. However, at that time, the directorship was not a full-time job. I had already assisted Burnet with a book and written two others, Myxomatosis and The Biology of Animal Viruses, so I thought that I would write some more books.
I had always felt somewhat guilty being called a Professor, having never given a course of lectures (I was never invited to lecture to students in the Faculties), and now I was never likely to. So I thought that I might occupy the spare time I had, always early in the morning before anyone else arrived and at irregular times on most days, to write a textbook on virology for medical students. I persuaded David White, an early PhD graduate (1960) from the Department of Microbiology, who was by then Professor of Microbiology at the University of Melbourne, who I knew to be a first-class teacher of virology, to be a co-author. The first edition, entitled Medical Virology and 390 pages long, was published by Academic Press in 1970. It received excellent reviews and sold very well. M. A. Epstein, writing in Nature, said, amongst other things:
Despite the risk of writing a rave notice, I am still filled with wonder on reflecting on the seeming ease with which extremely complicated topics [have] been reduced to an orderly survey of the basic facts involved, together with suitable explanations of their significance. This book can be used, therefore, both as an introductory textbook and as a very reliable and solid reference book.
We also received many complimentary letters and expressions of interest in using the book as a textbook. A Spanish edition was published in 1973.
The first edition of The Biology of Animal Viruses, published in 1968, had sold very well, but by the early 1970s clearly needed updating. The rapid advances were primarily in molecular virology, in which I lacked expertise, so I enlisted the help of three former students (Brian McAuslan, Joe Sambrook and David White) and one former staff member (Cedric Mims) as co-authors. We agreed on who should take primary responsibility for each chapter, then all authors should read each chapter, and, finally, I edited them so that there was a uniform style and a minimum of overlap. The Memorandum of Agreement with Academic Press was signed in March 1971 and the second edition published in hardback in 1974. The reviews were good; Kenneth Berns in American Scientist said:
In spite of the multiple authorship, the text is uniform and cohesive and may come close to being the universal source in animal virology. Its general sections serve admirably as an introduction for anyone who has had a basic biology course, while other sections contain well-organized compendia of the known facts concerning specific viruses and other aspects of virology…The book is a must…for all individuals interested in animal virology.
Since many of those interested in the book complained that the price was too high, after several thousand copies of the hardback had been sold the publishers produced a soft-cover ‘Students' Edition’ for about half the price. Total sales exceeded 11,000 copies. A Russian edition, translated by my friend Vladimir Agol, who I had met in Moscow in 1964, was published in 1976. Between 1976 and 1981, I received 36 requests from other authors wishing to use diagrams or tables contained in that book.