In a bizarre sequel to the Dismissal, it reveals how Kerr chose "secrecy over transparency" and "self-interest over propriety" in order to make as much money as possible from Matters for Judgement, his account of his sacking of the Whitlam government in 1975.

The book was one of the hottest publishing properties offered in Australia and created a bidding war between 27 publishers. The contest for newspaper serialisation rights was just as keen..

Harry M. Miller, the celebrity "agent to the stars" who later went to jail on fraud charges, spruiked it as a page-turning political thriller that was so exciting at times it was "difficult to accept it's a document of fact".

One report in The Australian Financial Review asserted the book and serialisation rights would gross more than $135,000 (around $650,000 in today's dollars), with an initial hard cover print run of 40,000 copies. Miller suggested the return could be as high as $500,000 (or $2.4 million today).

The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald bought exclusive world rights and ran 12 extracts over two weeks, surely a record for any book before or since, ahead of the book's release on December 2, 1978.

In a new edition of her book The Dismissal Dossier, author Jenny Hocking explains that money was a longstanding concern for Kerr. It had been the root of an inordinate delay in his decision to step down as chief justice of the NSW Supreme Court after just 18 months to become governor-general.

"Kerr had kept Whitlam and government officials busy for months as he sought not only the unprecedented 10-year term but also a 50 per cent increase in the governor-general's salary; an additional payment to cover lost superannuation; 'outfitting allowances' for himself and Lady Kerr; and a pension on retirement," Hocking writes.

In Matters for Judgement. Kerr makes plain his belief that he was suffering financially and making "a very real sacrifice" by resigning as governor-general after just 29 months, when he had expected to be in office for many years longer.

"Having in mid-1974 given up an office which assured me of a good salary and pension and stimulating work to do until I turned 70, in December 1977 on leaving the governor-generalship I would, at 63, be on a pension far less than my former judicial salary and very far less than my emoluments as governor-general," he wrote.

When it came to his likely book earnings, Hocking writes that Kerr's major concern was tax. "Specifically, that he would have to pay it."

She reports that Miller was hired and he   contacted the chartered accountants, Greenwood Challoner & Co, on Kerr's behalf, who in turn wrote to the law firm Allen, Allen & Hemsley, a firm "well versed in problematic large-scale tax matters".

"The key to Kerr's predicament was identified by Greenwood Challoner from the outset: if the income is earned in Australia then tax must be paid, the challenge therefore was to find a way to avoid income from the book being seen as earned in Australia," Hocking writes.

"However, and this was the rub, if Kerr entered into acceptable arrangements with an 'offshore entity' based in a 'designated tax haven' in order to minimise his tax, the Reserve Bank of Australia must first approve those arrangements as ones that 'did not involve the evasion of … Australian tax'.

"This then was the central dilemma, that in order to obtain a tax clearance certificate from the Reserve Bank of Australia confirming that no tax evasion was involved, both the tax avoidance and the tax avoider would have to be identified, and Kerr wanted neither."

There were other "more opaque", options to avoid disclosure, but the accounting firm recognised that someone in Kerr's position should think twice before entertaining them. Allen, Allen & Hemsley, on the other hand, had no such qualms.

"Their concern was not Kerr's position, but his identity. In their view it was 'most desirable' that Kerr keep his identity hidden and on a need-to-know basis," writes Hocking. "What transpired was a moment when law and ethics collided and, once again, Kerr's judgment was lacking."

To conceal his identity, Kerr chose the pseudonym Mr Frederick King and, for the next three months, "Mr King" and Allens deliberated on a scheme that would effectively subvert the usual oversight of the governor-general's financial dealings by the Reserve Bank of Australia.

"In the end, Allens proposed a highly complex scheme for Mr King, involving a tangle of companies across two countries, with documents to be signed in a third country," writes Hocking.

"It was known as an 'Uncle Charlie' scheme and included a trust in the United Kingdom, a company in the Netherlands, a second company in the United Kingdom, and necessitated a trip to Hong Kong, where 'Mr King' would sign the necessary documents.

"Through the company transfers, sales, sub-licensing and assignments of rights and capital, Kerr's earnings would be offshore and minimal, and neither the Reserve Bank of Australia nor the Australian Tax Office would know anything about it."

Kerr ended his term as governor-general on December 8,1977, but three weeks earlier his plans were upended when Allens advised him that the scheme might not succeed if he was to live in England.

As Allens' UK consultants, put it: "Mr King should take care that no part of his activities in writing the book takes place within the United Kingdom", otherwise British tax laws might yet take from Kerr the very tax he had worked so hard to avoiding paying.

It was essential, Allens advised, that "Mr King" write his book "outside the United Kingdom – say, in France".

Two days after he ceased to be governor-general, Kerr and his wife left Australia on one-way tickets with the stated intention of moving to London after a period in Europe. "The strongest drive operating in me was to write," he explained in his memoir.

As Kerr told it, they settled in a beautiful village high in the Austrian Tyrol "where we should be as little disturbed by outside contact as possible" and immersed himself in writing his book until "our quiet life" was dramatically interrupted by a message to call a senior official in Canberra.

"I was asked whether I would accept the post of Australian ambassador to UNESCO. This would mean living in Paris, with duties beginning in March."

Kerr wrote in Matters for Judgement that he understood a decision to accept the appointment would preclude the publication of his book while he was ambassador. He took the job nonetheless, "abandoning the visit to London and the early publication of my writings".

What he did not anticipate, he wrote, was the hostility the appointment would rekindle, especially from Labor leader Bill Hayden, who dubbed Kerr "Judas in a morning suit".

Kerr's response, in his first and only action as ambassador after arriving in Paris, was to resign and to return to his writing, including a comprehensive response to the attacks in Matters for Judgement.

The major flaw in Kerr's account concerns what he chose not to divulge, including another important revelation in Hocking's updated book: that he had wanted Fraser to confirm the Paris appointment when he announced Kerr's resignation as governor-general on July 14, 1977. This was denied by both Fraser and Kerr.

The irony, given the selective nature Matters for Judgement, is that so many of the key facts of the Dismissal that have filled out the story came from Kerr's own papers held by the National Archives of Australia in Canberra.

Having spent hundreds of hours methodically working her way through the papers at the archives, Hocking says she is satisfied that there is nothing more to learn from them. "Eventually they are quite depressing for what they tell us about Kerr," Hocking tells Fairfax Media. "He was a deeply troubled man."

There is, however, one instalment to come, a final piece of the puzzle that has been "as deliberately and as carefully concealed as every other aspect has been in this blighted history".

The 'Palace letters', including letters to Kerr from the Queen, her private secretary and Prince Charles, remain under embargo until 2027 and, even then, will only be released if authorised by the Queen's private secretary.

As Hocking puts it: "There could be no better example of our arcane and subservient status as a constitutional monarchy than this – that we cannot know the full history of the dismissal of the Whitlam government until the Queen says we can."

The Dismissal Dossier: updated edition by Jennifer Hocking (MUP), RRP $16.99, PB, is published on June 13.