Owen Harries, the man who midwifed the post-Cold War era by publishing The End of History essay months before the November 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall, is one of the few Australians to have commanded significant influence over global affairs.

More remarkable, Harries, who died in Sydney last Thursday aged 90, was never a prime minister, foreign minister, or head of a government department, but exercised this influence as editor of a conservative US magazine, and as an essayist, public speaker, conservative intellectual, networker extraordinaire, and possessor of a wicked wit.