Honest History

Honest History promotes balanced consideration of Australian history by offering contesting, evidence-based interpretations to students, teachers, universities, journalists and the public. We challenge the misuse of history to serve political or other agendas.

Honest History makes donations from book royalties to support secondary school history teachers and early career professional historians

Heritage Guardians: a campaign against the proposed $498m extensions to the Australian War Memorial

Total Australian spend on Anzac centenary is around $A600 million – or $1.1 billion if you include proposed War Memorial extensions

Steve Flora reviews Robert Macklin’s book, Castaway, about a French cabin boy marooned in North Queensland and befriended by Aboriginal people

Margaret O’Connor writes about the old song, ‘The Mountains of Mourne’

Richard Broinowski reviews Tom Gilling’s Project Rainfall: The Secret History of Pine Gap

Alison Broinowski reviews Brian Toohey’s Secret: The Making of Australia’s Security State

Former senior government lawyer Ernst Willheim on Witness K and Bernard Collaery

John McLeod reviews Jared Davidson’s Dead Letters, on censorship in World War I New Zealand

Derek Abbott reviews Geoffrey Blainey’s memoir, Before I Forget, a narrative of emergence as man and historian

Tony Abbott has form on commemoration but is the wrong choice for the War Memorial Council: David Stephens writes (picture ABC)  But, he’s the pea!

Looking back

Australia is more than Anzac – and always has been