Jauncey’s view explores the careers of Leslie Jauncey, his older brother, Eric, and Leslie’s wife, Beatrice. Leslie, in particular, finding himself in interesting parts of the world in the years before and after World War II, wrote perceptively about them.…
Stephens, David: From the Honest History vault: Jauncey’s View: the world through the eyes of an eccentric author, world traveller and rent-collector
David Stephens* ‘From the Honest History vault: Jauncey’s View: the world through the eyes of an eccentric author, world traveller and rent collector’, Honest History, 13 October 2020 When we began the Honest History website nearly seven years ago, we…
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Keeping up with the Jaunceys: some late despatches
Long-term readers of the Honest History site will remember the true life adventures and writings of Les (Bill) Jauncey, radical, writer on conscription and banking, friend of King O’Malley, world traveller, and husband of Beatrice (Bea or Bee) Eva Edmonds…
Flora, Steve & David Stephens: Les Jauncey, radical Australian historian and person of interest to the FBI: Part II
Steve Flora & David Stephens ‘Les Jauncey, radical Australian historian and person of interest to the FBI: Part II’, Honest History, 19 September 2017 Part I of this post covered the first decade (1941-51) of the FBI’s interest in the…
Flora, Steve & David Stephens: Les Jauncey, radical Australian historian and person of interest to the FBI: Part I
Steve Flora & David Stephens ‘Les Jauncey, radical Australian historian and person of interest to the FBI: Part I’, Honest History, 25 July 2017 Leslie Cyril Jauncey (1899-1959) has been a fellow traveller in the Honest History enterprise almost since…
Les Jauncey, radical Australian historian and person of interest to the FBI: Part I
Steve Flora & David Stephens ‘Les Jauncey, radical Australian historian and person of interest to the FBI: Part I’, Honest History, 25 July 2017 Reintroducing Les and Bee Jauncey Leslie Cyril Jauncey (1899-1959) has been a fellow traveller in the…
A Jauncey Christmas bonus
‘A Jauncey Christmas bonus’, Honest History, 15 December 2015 Old Honest History hands will recall our regular column Jauncey’s View, featuring the exploits and opinions of Leslie Cyril Jauncey (1899-1959), his wife Beatrice Eva Edmonds Fripp Jauncey (1895-1996) and other…
Farewell Les Jauncey, wandering radical (1 September 2015)
Leslie Cyril Jauncey has surprised us all. When we first planned the Honest History website two years ago we thought it would be nice to have a column, a place where various invited authors could write about things that interested…
Les Jauncey visits the socialist paradise, 1935 (4 August 2015)
‘Les Jauncey visits the socialist paradise, 1935’, Honest History, 4 August 2015 Our persistent Jaunceyphile, Steve Flora, has been keeping this in reserve. It is based on a report in the Melbourne-based Labor Call (2 April 1936) of Leslie Jauncey’s…
Les Jauncey writes to Doc Evatt after the 1958 election (7 July 2015)
Our dedicated researcher, Steve Flora, continues his search for the essential Leslie Jauncey, this time again with the help of Flinders University Library. This letter was written to Labor leader, Dr HV Evatt, just after Labor’s defeat in the 1958…
Two sides of the Jaunceys, 1935 and 1951 (9 June 2015)
Leslie Jauncey’s work on the Commonwealth Bank and the connections he made during it remained important to him and his wife Beatrice and provoked strong feelings both positive and somewhat negative. Here is a snippet from a letter Les wrote…
Jauncey writes to Doc Evatt about the US election 1952 (12 May 2015)
Our assiduous researcher, Steve Flora, in cooperation with Flinders University Library, has unearthed the letter extracted below, in which Les Jauncey passes on his observations of the presidential election to Dr Herbert Vere Evatt, Leader of the Opposition. ‘Jauncey’s letter…
Jauncey and the meat trade in the year of Jubilee (14 April 2015)
Our Jauncey editor, Steve Flora, has returned to 1934 to track Les and Beatrice from the Antipodes to London to the Antipodes and back again (with marriage and a visit to South Africa included). Now Leslie sharpens his pen to…
Jauncey coaches Sydneysiders in world history: Part IV (3 March 2015)
The portentous year of 1939 saw Leslie Jauncey writing for the renamed Sydney-based Daily News, but still spreading his attention between domestic American politics and how the world looked from the United States. We have no way of knowing how…
Les Jauncey reports again (Part III) on FDR’s America (3 February 2015)
Our indefatigable Steve Flora has surely become the world’s leading researcher on the Jauncey family and their Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic world. As well as tracking Leslie, Beatrice and Eric, he is unearthing nuggets about rabidly patriotic American professors, King O’Malley,…
Jauncey reports on FDR’s America (and elsewhere): Part II (2 December 2014)
Steve Flora delves further into Leslie Jauncey’s despatches from the United States for Labor newspapers in far-off Sydney. This is part of Honest History’s continuing researches into this fascinating, if relatively minor, figure of early 20th century Australian – and…
Journalist Jauncey reports on FDR in power: Part I (4 November 2014)
Steve Flora has become close to the Jauncey family through his extensive research, drawing upon archives and libraries in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Steve is of the Bowling Green, Kentucky, Floras so it is…
Jauncey gets best wishes from King O’Malley, 1933 (7 October 2014)
58 Bridport Street, Albert Park. S.C.5. 17th August, 1933. Toverish Jauncey, I received your kind letter from America, and was surprised to learn you had circled the earth. I am more than pleased that you expect the book in October,…
Jauncey, the Bish and Fisher in Albert Park (2 September 2014)
Before large cars with drivers ferried them around, many politicians lived in inner suburbs to be near public transport. This was particularly so when the Commonwealth Parliament met in Melbourne, as it did until 1927. Albert Park was one such…
A Jauncey writes to the Prime Minister 1920 (4 August 2014)
In 1917 GEM (Eric) Jauncey was a victim of war paranoia in his employment at the University of Missouri. The security services of the Hughes Government in Australia had been in touch with their American counterparts who paid a visit…
Jauncey’s mate King O’Malley writes about Canberra 1937 (3 July 2014)
Leslie Jauncey became very close to King O’Malley, following their initial meeting in Melbourne in mid 1932 during Jauncey’s first visit to his homeland since 1920. Frequent correspondence between the two continued until O’Malley’s death in 1953. O’Malley, American expatriate,…
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Leslie Jauncey writes to a grieving Amy O’Malley (12 June 2014)
Leslie and Beatrice Jauncey became close to King and Amy (Aimee) O’Malley. Our researcher, Steve Flora, himself born a mere 900 or so kilometres from King’s probable birthplace in Valley Falls, Kansas, has become close to all four of them…
By appointment: a right royal Jauncey (22 May 2014)
The Jauncey pen this time passes to Sarah Brasch. That feisty Kiwi, Beatrice Jauncey, had plenty of opportunity to compare events in her native land with those in Australia. We don’t know what she thought about knights, dames and royal…
A Jauncey victim of war paranoia in Missouri, 1917 (28 April 2014)
The Jauncey pen is taken up posthumously this time by Professor H. Wade Hibbard of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Missouri. He wrote the following indignant letter on 21 December 1917. The letter is genuine. It has been…
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Jauncey on those who also serve (26 March 2014)
David Stephens writes as Jauncey. When Milton wrote the famous words, ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’, he was reflecting on his blindness. But the line has been used since in all sorts of ways, ranging from a…
Beatrice Jauncey goes to the Hilton (4 March 2014)
Alison Broinowski takes over the Jauncey pen (and the Beatrice Jauncey persona) and recalls an early skirmish in the so-called ‘war on terror’ – the response to the Hilton Hotel bombing, Sydney, 1978. As a Kiwi, and hence imbued with higher…
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Jauncey meets Mephistopheles (18 February 2014)
In November 2013 I presented a keynote address to the biennial conference convened by the energetic Narratives of War Research Group of the University of South Australia. In it I compared Australia’s memory of war with that of various countries…
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Jauncey goes to Gettysburg (6 February 2014)
I have been interested in the American Civil War from the age of eleven. Over the years the idea grew that it would be worth attending in July 2013 the 150th anniversary of the war’s greatest battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.…
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Jauncey chews on chota hazri in Kolkata (30 January)
Peter Stanley takes over the Jauncey pen from David Stephens. I’m in Kolkata to deliver the keynote address at a conference, ‘Re-newing the military history of colonial India’, held at Jadavpur University, one of the most prestigious educational institutions in…
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Jauncey on the days (and years) of our lives (20 January 2014)
Happy New Year; 2014. Has anyone else noticed the significance of this year? Yes, of course, it is the centenary of the start of World War I and we won’t be allowed to forget that as the commemorative bandwagon rolls…
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Jauncey at the Brandenburg Gate (11 December 2013)
When a popular tourist information website took the Honest History name in vain, it deserved a closer look. There, on Trip Advisor, an American ex-pat in Germany was ‘amazed’ at how ‘blunt and honest’ about ‘triumphs and failures’ the Deutsches…
Jauncey in a war cemetery (3 December 2013)
Battlefields and war cemeteries are not places I have visited often nor places I much like. I remember seeing on a back road in northern California in 1985 a battered sign which commemorated the last stand nearby of the local…
Jauncey considers Keating on Remembrance Day (19 November 2013)
Paul Keating’s Remembrance Day speech 2013 marked the twentieth anniversary of his Unknown Australian Soldier speech at the Australian War Memorial in 1993. The tomb and the surrounding area at the Memorial has now been refurbished to include explicit recognition…
Jauncey unravels some strands (7 November 2013)
Sometimes the history of history is almost as vexing as history itself. One frustration of putting together a history bibliography rapidly is that you have no time to stop and read or re-read the books and articles that go into…
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Jauncey opens up (24 October 2013)
When the Honest History enterprise was just getting under way one supporter pointed out how great it would be to have in one place – a repository, indeed – a resource of material that put the Anzac myth under the…