Graham Seal has cred both as a historian and a story-teller. Best Australian Ghost Stories, just published, is his fourteenth book and its sub-title, ‘Spine-chilling tales of hauntings, apparitions and the unexplained’, gives a good idea of what’s inside. Seal…
From the Honest History vault: 80th anniversary of Hiroshima-Nagasaki
Today, 6 August, is the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. On the 70th anniversary, we ran the article below by Australian journalist, Wilfred Burchett, who was there. Here it is again. There are links in the introduction to…
Piggott, Michael: Re-stor(y)ing Australia’s cultural policy
Michael Piggott* ‘Re-stor(y)ing Australia’s cultural policy’, Honest History, 9 July 2025 Recently, Perth independent publisher Upswell released Anne-Marie Condé’s new book, The Prime Minister’s Potato and Other Essays, an anthology of beautifully written histories and speculations, most based on a single object, document…
Onward (less) Christian Soldiers! A breakthrough for rationality at the Memorial
Update 28 June 2025 The meeting has been held and RSA was encouraged by it. The Rationalist Society of Australia and three non-religious veterans met with two representatives of the War Memorial on Wednesday to discuss the dominance of the…
Wings over Campbell: expert predictions were correct about the Memorial’s Glazed Link
Dear Reader: you might have wondered how the War Memorial grew those wings as shown in our picture below. The strange effect was predicted years ago by experts – we’ve checked – and known to the Minister who signed the…
Lawriwsky, Michael: Albert Jacka VC – myths and legends
Michael Lawriwsky ‘Albert Jacka VC – myths and legends’, Honest History, 1 May 2025 [This review originally appeared in Quadrant and is republished here with the permission of the editor of Quadrant and of the author of the review. It…
Piggott, Michael: War and trauma – who’d have thought? Part II
Michael Piggott* ‘War and trauma – who’d have thought? Part II’, Honest History, 21 March 2025 Part I of this article. Commentary (continued) 3 There is something deeply ironic about a War Memorial being urged by a consultant to accept…
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Piggott, Michael: War and trauma – who’d have thought? Part I
Michael Piggott* ‘War and trauma – who’d have thought? Part I’, Honest History, 19 March 2025 Evidence On 7 January 2025, an article appeared in the Canberra Times headed ‘Damning report slams Australian War Memorial over “diversity”, “colonial terminology”’. There…
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What is wrong with Anzac Day services at the War Memorial? Symptom of a broader problem
Update 25 February 2025 Lots of good comments on the Crikey article, most supporting change to the War Memorial status quo. There’s also a petition. *** Honest History has followed the Rationalist Society of Australia’s (RSA) campaign to get the…
Shield, John: Alamein to Zem Zem: a soldier-poet in the Western Desert in World War II
John Shield* ‘Alamein to Zem Zem: a soldier-poet in the Western Desert in World War II’, Honest History, 31 January 2025 The back cover of my copy of Alamein to Zem Zem (Penguin Modern Classics 1969, book originally published 1946)…
Stephens, David: War Memorial art has always been eclectic – and some of it has been incisive
David Stephens* ‘War Memorial art has always been eclectic – and some of it has been incisive’, Honest History, 23 January 2025 The Australian War Memorial has built up an eclectic art collection over many years. There is George Lambert’s…
Piggott, Michael: Broken Years, Black convicts and Bennelong: some inadvertent irritations
Michael Piggott* ‘Broken Years, Black convicts and Bennelong: some inadvertent irritations’, Honest History, 19 November 2024 The online world seems awash at the moment with lists of things annoying baby-boomers, and indeed why they themselves are so annoying. Archivists have…
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Gladman, Si: War Memorial raises concerns about religious dominance of Anzac Day with veterans group
‘War Memorial raises concerns about religious dominance of Anzac Day with veterans group’, Rationale, 23 August 2024 updated [The piece below follows an earlier article from Si Gladman. He is Executive Director of the Rationalist Society of Australia (RSA) and…
FROM THE HONEST HISTORY VAULT: the persistence of Trump requires we look again at this famous study of bullshit
Over the years, Honest History has publicised the academic work of the late Professor Harry Frankfurt (1929-2023), a philosopher who famously nailed the phenomenon of ‘bullshit’, distinguishing it from lying but still excoriating its egregiousness. Harry Frankfurt 2017 (Wikipedia American…
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Gladman, Si: Time to take religion out of Anzac Day services
Si Gladman ‘Time to take religion out of Anzac Day services‘, Rationale, 25 May 2024 [Years ago, Honest History attended a service at the Australian War Memorial, presided over by a Bishop in a cassock. We thought that odd. Someone…
From the Honest History vault: Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia (a review)
We first posted this in 2018 and have re-run it a couple of times since. Again, it seems apposite in the week before the Voice vote, when whitefeller attitudes to blackfellers (and vice versa) seem to be front and centre.…
From the Honest History vault: how far from the tree does Murdoch fruit fall?
We first posted this in 2016 and have reposted it since but it is very apt again, speaking as it does to how characteristics are nurtured and passed on, mentors and governments brown-nosed and seduced – and sometimes perhaps controlled…
Government announces more money for National Library’s Trove service – but more needed for NLA and other national cultural institutions
Finance Minister Gallagher has announced $33m of extra funding for the National Library’s highly valued and much used Trove service. Further pre-Budget announcements are expected affecting the cultural institutions. For earlier stories covering the range of needs of national cultural…
Paul and Eslanda Robeson visit to Australia, 1960: author Ann Curthoys seeks information
[This request has come to us through Labour History sources in Melbourne. HH supports it] Ann Curthoys is writing a book on Paul Robeson and Eslanda Robeson’s visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1960. She would love to hear…
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Emerita Professor Diane Bell wins Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship
Congratulations to eminent anthropologist and author, Diane Bell, who has been awarded the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship at Adelaide Writers Week. Details below. Professor Bell has written a number of times for Honest History (use our Search engine). 9 March…
Australian War Memorial to stay in Defence/Veterans Affairs portfolio
Honest History had put in a submission to the National Cultural Policy review, arguing that the Australian War Memorial should be moved to the Arts portfolio, from the Defence/Veterans’ Affairs portfolio. It had been located there for nearly 40 years…
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National Cultural Policy documents: strong emphasis on First Nations
PM’s speech. Statement from PM and Minister Burke. The full policy. Commentary (and others linked from there). I would ask the arts community to join with me in urging us to take forward those steps together later this year by…
Cultural policy – an idea for the PM and Minister Burke: look at the structure of government
There was media last week noting the PM’s comments on cultural policy. “The national institutions have been starved of funds”, he said. “These are national assets that are a very important part about our fabric. And so, that is something…
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Piggott, Michael: Waiting for a cultural policy for Christmas
Michael Piggott* ‘Waiting for a cultural policy for Christmas’, Honest History, 12 December 2022 updated When Anthony Albanese announced his ministry at the end of May, Tony Burke became Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, and separately, Minister for the…
Manning, Paddy: The Successor: the High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch
Paddy Manning The Successor: the High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2022 As heir apparent to his father’s global media empire, Lachlan Murdoch is one of the world’s most powerful people. Yet despite a life in the spotlight,…
Broinowski, Richard: Buccaneers down through the generations: Lachlan Murdoch
Richard Broinowski* ‘Buccaneers down through the generations: Lachlan Murdoch’, Honest History, 3 December 2022 Richard Broinowski reviews The Successor: the High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch, by Paddy Manning The tradition of swashbuckling press barons in the English-language is not new.…
From the Honest History vault: Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett on Hiroshima
Yesterday, 6 August, was the 77th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. We ran the post below for the 70th anniversary in 2015. Here it is again. There are links in the introduction to the…
Odgers, Brett: Still talking to the War Memorial? The review and regeneration of Anzac Parade, Canberra
Brett Odgers* ‘Still talking to the War Memorial? The review and regeneration of Anzac Parade, Canberra’, Honest History, 1 March 2022 [In the lead up to Anzac Day and as we confront another war in Europe, how we treat our…
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O’Connell, Deirdre: Harlem Nights: The Secret History of Australia’s Jazz Age
Deirdre O’Connell Harlem Nights: The Secret History of Australia’s Jazz Age, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2021 The 1920s were a time of wonder and flux, when Australians sensed a world growing smaller, turning faster-and, for some, skittering off balance. American…
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Myrtle, John: Tough gig: American jazz culture comes to 1928 White Australia
John Myrtle* ‘Tough gig: American jazz culture comes to 1928 White Australia’, Honest History, 3 December 2021 John Myrtle reviews Harlem Nights: The Secret History of Australia’s Jazz Age by Deirdre O’Connell Jazz, distinctively American musical style. The historical significance…
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Sulllivan, Christopher Daniel: The case for an Australian folk music tradition
Christopher Daniel Sullivan The case for an Australian folk music tradition, PhD thesis, Southern Cross University, 2020 (available on open access, including music files) Using new and more comprehensive sources this thesis re-interprets the evidence for an Australian folk music…
From the Honest History vault: review of Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia: racist society or casual racism or both?
Footballers Taylor Walker (with his slur against Robbie Young), Eddie Betts and Nic Naitanui have brought to the fore the issue of racism in sport. Have they shown us yet again that Australia is a ‘racist society’, systemically, inherently, inevitably,…
Inglis, Ken, Bill Gammage, Seumas Spark & Jay Winter, with Carol Bunyan, Dunera Lives: Profiles
Ken Inglis, Bill Gammage, Seumas Spark & Jay Winter, with Carol Bunyan Dunera Lives: Profiles, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2020 The story of the “Dunera Boys” is an intrinsic part of the history of Australia in the Second World War…
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Holt, Stephen: Another Philipp (sic) encounters Australia: one of many stories in a rich second Dunera volume
Stephen Holt* ‘Another Philipp (sic) encounters Australia: one of many stories in a rich second Dunera volume’, Honest History, 30 September 2020 Stephen Holt reviews Dunera Lives: Profiles, by Ken Inglis, Bill Gammage, Seumas Spark and Jay Winter with Carol…
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Stephens, David: Review note: Ted Egan’s The Anzacs: 100 Years On in Story and Song
David Stephens* ‘Review note: Ted Egan’s The Anzacs: 100 Years On in Story and Song‘, Honest History, 18 September 2020 Update: Mr Egan offers free copies of the book to worthy causes. Contact. *** Ted Egan is what was once…
Australia’s settler-colonial art seen through the work of a Blue Mountains historian
People have painted and pictured Australia as long as they have been here. Comparatively recently though, since 1788, there has been what historian Dr Gary Werskey specialises in – settler-colonial art, particularly the work of AH (Albert Henry) Fullwood (1863-1930).…
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Browne, Peter & Seumas Spark, ed.: ‘I Wonder’: The Life and Work of Ken Inglis
Peter Browne & Seumas Spark, ed. ‘I Wonder’: The Life and Work of Ken Inglis, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2020 Ken Inglis was one of Australia’s most creative, wide-ranging and admired historians. During a scholarly career spanning nearly seven decades,…
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Piggott, Michael: Wondering about the long and well-lived life of historian, Ken Inglis
Michael Piggott* ‘Wondering about the long and well-lived life of historian, Ken Inglis’, Honest History, 14 April 2020 Michael Piggott reviews ‘I Wonder’: The Life and Work of Ken Inglis, edited by Peter Browne and Seumas Spark In ‘Looking at…
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Farrelly, Elizabeth: Dull, wasteful and overblown – is this the best Australia can do?
Elizabeth Farrelly ‘Dull, wasteful and overblown – is this the best Australia can do?‘, Age, 30 November 2019 Architecture critic and commentator looks at the expansion plans for the Australian War Memorial against a backdrop of consideration of Canberra’s planning:…
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Stephens, David: Review note: An exhibition on averting war and keeping the peace: new at the War Memorial
David Stephens* ‘Review note: An exhibition on averting war and keeping the peace: new at the War Memorial’, Honest History, 23 October 2019 updated The Courage for Peace, a new exhibition at the Australian War Memorial, is a modest attempt…
O’Connor, Margaret: “The Mountains of Mourne”: such a sweet, charming song
Margaret O’Connor* ‘“The Mountains of Mourne”: such a sweet, charming song’, Honest History, 9 September 2019 ‘The Mountains of Mourne’ is such a sweet, charming song. Just consider the lyrics, in the form of a letter from a naïve Irish…
Coe, Bruce: Pulling Through: The Story of the King’s Cup
Bruce Coe Pulling Through: The Story of the King’s Cup, Slattery Media, Melbourne, 2019 The story behind the winning of the 1919 King’s Cup by the Australian Imperial Forces No. 1 crew is fascinating. Wartime authorities created diversions for war…
Jordan, Lucas: Rowing on after the Great War: the origins of the King’s Cup
Lucas Jordan* ‘Rowing on after the Great War: the origins of the King’s Cup’, Honest History, 8 July 2019 Lucas Jordan reviews Bruce Coe’s Pulling Through: The Story of the King’s Cup On Saturday, 5 July 1919, an eight-man rowing…
Featherstone, Nigel: Bodies of Men
Nigel Featherstone Bodies of Men, Hachette Australia, Sydney, 2019; electronic version available A beautifully evocative tale of two men whose lives are brought together in tragedy – for lovers of books by Kevin Powers and Sebastian Barry. There is nothing…
Riseman, Noah: This novel is a worthy read on same-sex relations in the forces during the Second World War
Noah Riseman* ‘This novel is a worthy read on same-sex relations in the forces during the Second World War’, Honest History, 19 June 2019 Noah Riseman reviews Bodies of Men, by Nigel Featherstone Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI)…
Smith, Tony: Review note: Don Brian: The Convict Voice: Songs of Transportation to Norfolk Island and NSW
Tony Smith ‘Review note: Don Brian: The Convict Voice: Songs of Transportation to Norfolk Island and NSW’, Honest History, 13 May 2019 updated © 2019 Tony Smith Transportation to the eastern states ceased around 1850 but continued later in Western…
Janson, Julie: The Light Horse Ghost
Julie Janson The Light House Ghost, Nibago, Avalon, NSW, 2018; electronic version available From the World War 1 Middle Eastern Theatre of War, the Desert Campaign and the Light Horse military victory, to a quiet family life in a gold…
Broinowski, Alison: A novel about war on the home front and in the Middle East
Alison Broinowski* ‘A novel about war on the home front and in the Middle East’, Honest History, 12 May 2019 Alison Broinowski reviews Julie Janson’s The Light Horse Ghost Julie Janson knows about the other Australia. Descended from the Darug…
Stephens, David: Köken Ergun’s Şehitler (Heroes) is a well observed Dardanelles doco that deserves wide distribution
David Stephens* Köken Ergun’s Şehitler (Heroes) is a well observed Dardanelles doco that deserves wide distribution’, Honest History, 18 April 2019 updated Update 24 April 2019: Turkish nationals are to be excluded from Australian ceremonies at Gallipoli, 2019. Security reasons cited.…
Shield, John: The Cardboard Crown: Martin Boyd’s novel about an Australian family caught between two worlds
John Shield* ‘The Cardboard Crown: Martin Boyd’s novel about an Australian family caught between two worlds’, Honest History, 1 February 2019 This is the third of John Shield’s articles exploring the Text Classics list. The first looked at Don Charlwood’s All the Green Year…
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Stephens, David: Review note: Meanjin’s Summer 2018 issue is nutritious and thought-provoking
David Stephens* ‘Review note: Meanjin’s Summer 2018 issue is nutritious and thought-provoking’, Honest History, 29 January 2019 updated There’s always a lot to read in an issue of Meanjin and its Summer 2018 issue is rightly labelled ‘Bumper’. This reviewer…
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Bromfield, Nicholas: The genre of Prime Ministerial Anzac Day addresses, 1973–2016
Nicholas Bromfield ‘The genre of Prime Ministerial Anzac Day addresses, 1973–2016‘, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 64, 1, March 2018, pp. 81-97 Statistical analysis based on the author’s PhD thesis. Includes some interesting insights. The last quarter of a…
Megarrity, Lyndon: Geoffrey Bolton and the writing of Australian history
Lyndon Megarrity ‘Geoffrey Bolton and the writing of Australian history‘, Australian Policy and History, 10 December 2018 Question and answer style in the website’s ‘Prominent Profiles’ series. Covers broad overview of Bolton’s career, how Megarrity came to know Bolton and…
Humphrey McQueen and Celeste Liddle – and lots of others – on Australia Day
Here is a link to a piece by Humphrey McQueen just published in Overland (though a version of it appeared two years ago on the Honest History site). McQueen takes a fresh approach to the long-running issues surrounding Australia Day.…
Honest History review roundup: the books we wrote up in 2018
It’s been a great year for history publishing in Australia. Honest History has had the privilege of publishing reviews of materials that discuss, interrogate and eloquently distill the multi-faceted realities of our country’s history. From Diane Bell’s stirring reflection on…
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Lilley, Ian & Celmara Pocock: Australia’s problem with Aboriginal World Heritage
Ian Lilley & Celmara Pocock ‘Australia’s problem with Aboriginal World Heritage‘, The Conversation, 13 December 2018 Of 19 World Heritage sites across the country, including such wonders as the Great Barrier Reef and the Sydney Opera House, only two, Kakadu…
Bongiorno, Frank: The year some things changed
Frank Bongiorno ‘The year some things changed‘, Sydney Review of Books, 3 December 2018 updated Head of the ANU School of History (and Honest History president) reviews The Year Everything Changed: 2001 by Phillipa McGuinness, author (and publisher of The…
Hutchison, Margaret: Painting War: A History of Australia’s First World War Art Scheme
Margaret Hutchison Painting War: A History of Australia’s First World War Art Scheme, Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, 2018 Part of the Australian Army History series, edited by Peter Stanley. During the First World War the Australian Government established an…
Werskey, Gary: Warpaint: the making of Australian war art
Gary Werskey* ‘Warpaint: the making of Australian war art’, Honest History, 28 November 2018 Gary Werskey reviews Margaret Hutchison, Painting War: A History of Australia’s First World War Art Scheme, by Margaret Hutchison I didn’t know until I read Margaret…
Stanley, Peter, ed.: Jeff Grey: A Life in History
Peter Stanley, ed. Jeff Grey: A Life in History, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, UNSW Canberra, Canberra, 2018 Memorial volume for UNSW Canberra’s late Professor of History. Authors are Frank Bongiorno, John Connor, Peter Dennis, Eleanor Hancock, Peter Stanley,…
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Richardson, Andrew: Jeff Grey’s character, personality and contribution are captured in this book
Andrew Richardson* ‘Jeff Grey’s character, personality and contribution are captured in this book’, Honest History, 27 November 2018 Andrew Richardson reviews Jeff Grey: A Life in History, edited by Peter Stanley Like most (if not all) military historians based in…
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Fahy, Michelle: Invictus Games, glossing over inconvenient truths – the arms trade and the British royals
Michelle Fahy ‘Invictus Games, glossing over inconvenient truths – the arms trade and the British royals‘, Pearls and Irritations, 19 October 2018 updated Michelle Fahy from Medical Association for Prevention of War provides a forensic analysis of the links between…
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Stephens, David: It’s a cultural thing – isn’t it?
David Stephens ‘It’s a cultural thing – isn’t it?‘ Inside Story, 5 September 2018 A parliamentary inquiry seems to be carefully avoiding the real challenge for Australia’s national museums, archives and libraries … [The inquiry by the Joint Committee on…
Gainsborough, Vance: Review note: Steve Sailah’s Killing Kitchener is a nicely-paced yarn set against a historical background
Vance Gainsborough* ‘Review note: Steve Sailah’s Killing Kitchener is a nicely-paced yarn set against a historical background’, Honest History, 1 September 2018 My (self-published) novelist friend, Ned Rowney, advises me that the keys to a good yarn are Place, Plot…
Stephens, David: Dunera Lives is a tribute to resilience and a testament of worthy contributions to Australia
David Stephens[*] ‘Dunera Lives is a tribute to resilience and a testament of worthy contributions to Australia’, Honest History, 12 July 2018 updated David Stephens reviews Dunera Lives: A Visual History, by Ken Inglis, Seumas Spark and Jay Winter, with…
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Dunera Lives is well and truly launched: speeches by Frank Bongiorno in Canberra and Raimond Gaita in Melbourne
Dunera Lives: A Visual History was launched in Canberra on 4 July by Frank Bongiorno and in Melbourne on 8 and 9 July by Raimond Gaita. Frank Bongiorno’s speech and Raimond Gaita’s speech, both by courtesy of the authors. David…
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Inglis, Ken, Jay Winter & Seumas Spark, with Carol Bunyan: Dunera Lives: A Visual History
Ken Inglis, Jay Winter & Seumas Spark, with Carol Bunyan Dunera Lives: A Visual History, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2018 In July 1940, around 2000 refugees, most of whom were Jewish and from Germany or Austria, were sent from Britain…
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Morrissey, Douglas: Stringybark Creek and Glenrowan still resonate but can we ever hit the right note? Ned Kelly movies considered
Douglas Morrissey* ‘Stringybark Creek and Glenrowan still resonate but can we ever hit the right note? Ned Kelly movies considered’, Honest History, 9 July 2018 Recently, there has been an abundance of enthusiastic moviemakers wanting to make films about Ned…
Lake, Meredith: The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History
Meredith Lake The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History, NewSouth, Sydney, 2018 In this surprising and revelatory history of the Bible in Australia, Meredith Lake gets under the skin of a text that’s been read, wrestled with, preached and tattooed,…
Hynd, Douglas: The global, cultural and theological Bible: uncovering a history
Douglas Hynd* ‘The global, cultural and theological Bible: uncovering a history’, Honest History, 12 June 2018 Douglas Hynd reviews The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History by Meredith Lake You might think a history of the Bible in Australian culture…
Piggin, Stuart & Robert D. Linder: The Fountain of Public Prosperity: Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1740–1914
Stuart Piggin & Robert D. Linder The Fountain of Public Prosperity: Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1740–1914, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2018 The official religion brought to Australia with the First Fleet was Evangelical Christianity, the “vital religion” then shaping…
Hynd, Douglas: Evangelical Christians weaved a sturdy thread in our history
Douglas Hynd* ‘Evangelical Christians weaved a sturdy thread in our history’, Honest History, 4 June 2018 Douglas Hynd reviews The Fountain of Public Prosperity: Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1740-1914 by Stuart Piggin and Robert D. Linder The authors of…
Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (36): Schools and a Smoke Social in South Gippsland 1918
‘Divided sunburnt country: Australia 1916-18 (36): Schools and a Smoke Social in South Gippsland’, Honest History, 1 June 2018 This occasional series has often drawn upon the work of Phil Cashen of the Shire at War blog, about how the…
Review note: Eleanor’s Secret is an easy read but draws on specialist knowledge
‘Review note: Eleanor’s Secret is an easy read but draws on specialist knowledge’, Honest History, 27 May 2018 Gentle Reader* reviews another wartime novel by Caroline Beecham I described Caroline Beecham’s Maggie’s Kitchen (2016) as ‘technically fiction’ but with plenty…
Troughton, Geoffrey & Philip Fountain, ed.: Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand
Geoffrey Troughton & Philip Fountain, ed. Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2018 This is a book about how New Zealanders have been inspired by visions for peace. Focusing on…
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Hynd, Douglas: Is peace as interesting as war?
Douglas Hynd* ‘Is peace as interesting as war?’ Honest History, 23 May 2018 Douglas Hynd reviews Pursuing Peace in Godzone: Christianity and the Peace Tradition in New Zealand, edited by Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain Towards the conclusion of Judith…
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Whitaker, Robyn J.: How the Bible helped shape Australian culture
Robyn J. Whitaker ‘How the Bible helped shape Australian culture‘, The Conversation, 15 May 2018 Discusses Meredith Lake’s new book, The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History. Time and time again, Lake traces the multiplicity of biblical interpretations and applications to…
Daley, Paul: The National Picture: overwhelming reminder of wilful gaps in Australia’s history
Paul Daley ‘The National Picture: overwhelming reminder of wilful gaps in Australia’s history‘, Guardian Australia, 14 May 2018 Review of a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ‘The National Picture: the art of Tasmania’s Black War’. The…
Flanagan, Richard: ‘Our politics is a dreadful black comedy’ – press club speech in full
Richard Flanagan ‘”Our politics is a dreadful black comedy” – press club speech in full’, Guardian Australia, 19 April 2018 Man Booker Prize winner considers the possibilities for authoritarian politics around the world, before moving on to look at whether…
Griffiths, Billy: Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia
Billy Griffiths Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2018; electronic version available Soon after Billy Griffiths joins his first archaeological dig as camp manager and cook, he is hooked. Equipped with a historian’s inquiring mind, he embarks…
Goreng Goreng, Tjanara: This book about Australian archaelogy and archaelogists is a gift to all of us
Tjanara Goreng Goreng* ‘This book about Australian archaelogy and archaelogists is a gift to all of us’, Honest History, 10 April 2018 Tjanara Goreng Goreng reviews Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia, by Billy Griffiths This book reaches into the…
Gainsborough, Vance: Review note: Meanjin Autumn 2018: ‘the moral consequences of the things we do’
Vance Gainsborough* ‘Review note: Meanjin Autumn 2018: “the moral consequences of the things we do”‘, Honest History, 5 April 2018 Like all issues of this venerable but feisty publication, Meanjin Autumn 2018 has a lot of meaty content, so this…
Shield, John: Between Sky and Sea: Herz Bergner’s Australian Yiddish novel about the Holocaust and the search for the Promised Land
John Shield[1] ‘Between Sky and Sea: Herz Bergner’s Australian Yiddish novel about the Holocaust and the search for the Promised Land’, Honest History, 30 March 2018 This is the second of John Shield’s articles exploring the Text Classics list. The…
Bowern, Claire: The origins of Pama-Nyungan, Australia’s largest family of Aboriginal languages
Claire Bowern ‘The origins of Pama-Nyungan, Australia’s largest family of Aboriginal languages‘, The Conversation, 13 March 2018 The approximately 400 languages of Aboriginal Australia can be grouped into 27 different families. To put that diversity in context, Europe has just four…
Clarke, Patricia: Political journalist Joe Alexander: establishing Canberra’s heritage — Parliament, diplomacy and life in suburbia
Patricia Clarke* ‘Political journalist Joe Alexander: establishing Canberra’s heritage — Parliament, diplomacy and life in suburbia‘, Honest History, 23 February 2018 Originally a lecture to the ACT Heritage Symposium in August 2017. An exploration of the career of a significant…
Shield, John: All the Green Year: Don Charlwood between war and depression
John Shield* ‘All the Green Year: Don Charlwood between war and depression’, Honest History, 30 January 2018 When Honest History discovered the Australia Explained website and I turned to the books page thereon it gladdened my heart to see there…
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Repost of Humphrey McQueen 2017 on Australia Day – plus other material on this perennial but important set of issues
Update 8 February 2018: Paul Daley in Guardian Australia on what the confected fuss about flying the Indigenous flag on a large Sydney coathanger says about Australia 2018: It is regrettable that anything approaching public argument over such a fundamental…
Grishin, Sasha: Arthur Streeton: The art of war at the National Gallery of Australia combines beauty and barbarity
Sasha Grishin ‘Arthur Streeton: The art of war at the National Gallery of Australia combines beauty and barbarity’, Canberra Times, 10 January 2018 Review of an exhibition at the National Gallery, Canberra, until 29 April, just after Anzac Day. Reminds…
What Honest History reviewed in 2017: might be some Christmas reading here
Honest History’s reviews are found here, with the latest at the top of the list. You can scroll down and find reviews of a wide range of books, of a generally historical bent, along with the occasional movie or television…
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Stephens, David: Review note: Great Convict Stories by Graham Seal
David Stephens ‘Review note: Great Convict Stories by Graham Seal’, Honest History, 11 December 2017 This book contains about 85 little chunks of history (two to four pages each, mostly), bound into ten bundles, with seven to eleven chunks per…
Black Inc.: The Wisdom of Oz: Australian Aphorisms from the Profound to the Profane
Black Inc. The Wisdom of Oz: Australian Aphorisms from the Profound to the Profane, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2017 A little book about truth, in a world defined by insidious lies. The Wisdom of Oz presents the finest pearls of wisdom from…
Laugesen, Amanda: Truths about the Australian character: aphorisms we have known and invented
‘Truths about the Australian character: aphorisms we have known and invented’, Honest History, 27 November 2017 Amanda Laugesen* reviews The Wisdom of Oz: Australian Aphorisms from the Profound to the Profane ‘Such is life.’ ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy.’ ‘This is…
McCormack, Matthew: Historians and Twitter
Matthew McCormack ‘Historians and Twitter‘, Twitter/History at Northampton blog, 20 November 2017 This is a first for Honest History – turning a Tweet into a post – but it is done gladly because Matthew McCormack up there at the University…
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Paradoxical purchase: War Memorial acquires APY ‘defence of Country’ painting Kulatangku angakanyini manta munu Tjukurpa
The Australian War Memorial has unveiled a large painting by artists from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands in South Australia. The painting, Kulatangku angakanyini manta munu Tjukurpa (‘Country and Culture will be protected by spears’) hangs in a conspicuous…
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Glover, Jeff: “Trying to be something they’re not”: grandfathers, Diggers, and Peter FitzSimons
Jeff Glover* ‘“Trying to be something they’re not”: grandfathers, Diggers, and Peter FitzSimons’, Honest History, 10 November 2017 As a 61-year-old avid reader of Australian military history, all too often these days I find inaccuracies, mistruths and even lies about…
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Guardian Australia: From Louise Lovely to Nicole Kidman: 100 years of Australian film – in pictures
Guardian Australia ‘From Louise Lovely to Nicole Kidman: 100 years of Australian film – in pictures‘, Guardian Australia, 5 November 2017 Cheery on a wet day in Canberra, this is a promo for an exhibition, Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits, opening…
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Gallagher, Emily: ‘Bang, bang, bang!’: the shock of a boy playing with a gun on a suburban street
Emily Gallagher ‘“Bang, bang, bang!”: the shock of a boy playing with a gun on a suburban street‘, The Conversation, 25 October 2017 A perceptive brief survey of the changing patterns of children’s urban play in Australia. Over the last…
St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne: Anzac Day, 25 April 2017: Truly, we will remember them
St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne Anzac Day, 25 April 2017: Truly, we will remember them (pdf supplied by Rev. John H. Smith). The order of service is headed, ‘An Ecumenical Service of Lament, Repentance and Hope for the Centenary of the…
Corn, Aaron: Friday essay: Dr Joe Gumbula, the ancestral chorus, and how we value Indigenous knowledges
Aaron Corn ‘Friday essay: Dr Joe Gumbula, the ancestral chorus, and how we value Indigenous knowledges‘, The Conversation, 29 September 2017 An edited version of the Dr Joe Gumbula Memorial Lecture presented at the 16th Symposium on Indigenous Music and…
Songlines need to be marked and followed: new at the National Museum of Australia
Just opened at the National Museum and running till February is Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters. Songlines – roughly, wisdom-bearing Dreaming paths – may be mysterious to many settler (non-Indigenous) Australians but this exhibition should at least begin to set…
Tatz, Colin: Australians may well love their sport, but why don’t we delight in success elsewhere?
Colin Tatz ‘Australians may well love their sport, but why don’t we delight in success elsewhere?‘ The Conversation, 6 September 2017 The Australian nation and nationalism, we often proclaim, began at Gallipoli. This is a nonsense, as that sets aside the…
Handasyde, Kerrie: Anzac theology and women poets under the Southern Cross
Kerrie Handasyde ‘Anzac theology and women poets under the Southern Cross‘, Colloquium: The Australian and New Zealand Theological Review, Vol. 49 No. 1, May 2017, pp. 17-30 (pdf courtesy of author; open access) During the Great War Australians lived within…
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James, Jonathan D.: As Australia becomes less religious, our parliament becomes more so
Jonathan D. James ‘As Australia becomes less religious, our parliament becomes more so‘, The Conversation, 21 August 2017 An interesting examination as the marriage equality issue bubbles. Even though the 2016 Census revealed that more than 30% of the Australian population identify…
Myrtle, John: Observing journalism for 80 years: The Arthur Norman Smith Lecture in Journalism
John Myrtle ‘Observing journalism for 80 years: The Arthur Norman Smith Lecture in Journalism’, Honest History, 18 August 2017 updated A paper in three parts: an introduction to Arthur Norman Smith and the endowed Arthur Norman Smith Lecture in Journalism;…
Observing journalism for 80 years: The Arthur Norman Smith Lecture in Journalism
John Myrtle[1] ‘Observing journalism for 80 years: The Arthur Norman Smith Lecture in Journalism’, Honest History, 18 August 2017 updated Introduction There are three parts to this paper: an introduction to Arthur Norman Smith and the endowed Arthur Norman Smith…
Macintyre, Stuart, Lenore Layman & Jenny Gregory, ed.: A Historian for All Seasons: Essays for Geoffrey Bolton
Stuart Macintyre, Lenore Layman & Jenny Gregory, ed. A Historian for All Seasons: Essays for Geoffrey Bolton, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2017 Geoffrey Bolton [1931-2015] was the most versatile and widely travelled of his generation of Australian historians. As a…
Stanley, Peter, ed.: Charles Bean: Man, Myth, Legacy
Peter Stanley, ed. Charles Bean: Man, Myth, Legacy, UNSW Press, Canberra, 2017 Proceedings of a 2016 conference at UNSW Canberra. Australia’s official war correspondent during WWI, Charles Bean was also Australia’s first official war historian and the driving force behind…
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‘There is a land where summer skies are gleaming with a thousand dyes’: a 1977 voluntary vote plebiscite on a musical matter
Plebiscites are in the news. There have been plebiscites before in Australian history. There were two on conscription in 1916-17 and they were held against perhaps the greatest societal divisions in our history. (See our series, ‘Divided sunburnt country‘.) Forty…
Betty Cuthbert, Australian Olympic Athlete, dead at 79
Reposted from 12 April 2016. The senior citizens among us remember Betty Cuthbert as an athlete when we were all much younger, in a much simpler time. All of us noted her appearance at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and…
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Abjorensen, Norman: Australia’s great political shift
Norman Abjorensen ‘Australia’s great political shift‘, Inside Story, 28 July 2017 On the eve of Liberal and Coalition party meetings on an issue – marriage equality – which has, for some people at least, a religious element, this piece is…
Dark irony and dishonesty of Dunkirk: misrepresentations, exaggerations, and clunky bits
‘Dark irony and dishonesty of Dunkirk: misrepresentations, exaggerations, and clunky bits’, Honest History, 1 August 2017 Peter Stanley* reviews Dunkirk Just as Theresa May’s government writhes over the implications of Brexit, there is a dark irony in the appearance of…
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Nolan, Christopher (dir.): Dunkirk
Christopher Nolan Dunkirk, Syncopy, Warner Brothers and others, UK, US, France, Netherlands, 2017 Set during the Second World War, [the film, with an ensemble cast] portrays the Dunkirk evacuation … Nolan wrote the script, told from three perspectives—the land, sea, and air—to contain…
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Puri, Anisa & Alistair Thomson, ed.: Australian Lives: an Intimate History
Anisa Puri & Alistair Thomson, ed. Australian Lives: an Intimate History, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2017; e-book available Australian Lives: An Intimate History illuminates Australian life across the 20th and into the 21st century: how Australian people have been shaped by…
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The generations of us: Australian Lives (review of Puri and Thomson, ed.)
‘The generations of us: Australian Lives’ (review of Puri and Thomson, ed.), Honest History, 25 July 2017 Michael Piggott* reviews Australian Lives: an Intimate History, edited by Anisa Puri and Alistair Thomson The imperative to secure research grants is one…
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Art and design: 1930s Australia: the art deco designs ushering in a brave new world – in pictures
Art and design ‘1930s Australia: the art deco designs ushering in a brave new world – in pictures‘, Guardian Australia, 14 July 2017 We normally try to find an author for our posts. No luck this time, but we’ll still…
Bongiorno, Frank: Donald Horne’s ‘lucky country’ and the decline of the public intellectual
Frank Bongiorno ‘Donald Horne’s “lucky country” and the decline of the public intellectual‘, The Conversation, 11 July 2017 updated Honest History’s president reviews Donald Horne: Selected Writings, edited by Nick Horne. Horne’s message [in his most famous book, The Lucky…
Gainsborough, Vance: Tocsin first and Meanjin latest: alarm bells at the bend in the river: review note
Vance Gainsborough* ‘Tocsin first and Meanjin latest: alarm bells at the bend in the river: review note’, Honest History, 2 July 2017 A ‘tocsin’ is an alarm bell or signal and ‘Meanjin’ is an Indigenous word for the bend in…
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McGuinness, Phillipa: How to… write a book proposal
Phillipa McGuinness ‘How to … write a book proposal’, AHA Early Career Researchers Blog, 22 June 2017 What a buzzy little production this blog is and this is a really useful short note on it from the Executive Publisher of…
Stephens, David: Graham Freudenberg, elegant and erudite scribe of an important era in Australian politics – and earlier
David Stephens ‘Graham Freudenberg, elegant and erudite scribe of an important era in Australian politics – and earlier’, Honest History, 22 June 2017 Norman Graham Freudenberg AM is 83 years old this year. He has written speeches for Labor leaders,…
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Talking about The Conversation: five easy pieces in just a few days
Update 22 June 2017: and, lo, just as we ruled a line and settled on the headline, The Conversation came good again with: three charts on looming differential access to the National Broadband Network (digital divide, another form of inequality);…
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Muller, Denis: Mixed media: how Australia’s newspapers became locked in a war of left versus right
Denis Muller ‘Mixed media: how Australia’s newspapers became locked in a war of left versus right‘, The Conversation, 19 June 2017 updated Historical view of the ownership and attitudes of Australian newspapers since the 19th century, though nowadays it is…
Winter, Geoffrey: AFL Aficionados!! Not many people know this
Geoffrey Winter* ‘AFL Aficionados!! Not many people know this’, Honest History, 15 June 2017 Jock McHale (Wikipedia) In 120 years of VFL-AFL premiership competition (1897-2016), 25 coaches have led their clubs to just one premiership each. Another 25 coaches have…
Schultz, Julianne & Jerath Head, ed.: Griffith Review 56: Millennials Strike Back
Julianne Schultz & Jerath Head, ed. Griffith Review 56: Millennials Strike Back, April 2017 Millennials, those born in the final decades of the twentieth century, have had bad press for a long time. Now they are fighting back as they…
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Time-travelling millennials: Griffith Review 56
‘Time-travelling millennials: Griffith Review 56’, Honest History, 13 June 2017 Emily Gallagher* reviews Griffith Review 56: Millennials Strike Back There is no such thing as a normative childhood. Generations of children might share in a collection of culturally specific circumstances,…
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Breen, Sally: Friday essay: the 90s – why you had to be there
Sally Breen ‘Friday essay: the 90s – why you had to be there‘, The Conversation, 9 June 2017 Review of – and thoughts provoked by – a new exhibition, Every Brilliant Eye: Australian Art of the 1990s, at the National…
Boucher, Leigh: Only Heaven Knows brings 1940s queer Sydney roaring back to life
Leigh Boucher ‘Only Heaven Knows brings 1940s queer Sydney roaring back to life‘, The Conversation, 6 June 2017 A revived musical gives an insight into a Kings Cross lifestyle that flourished during the war years, then faded for a while. The…
Five links from left field: communism, radicalism, war and peace, utopia, Tiananmen Square
Sometimes we like to post miscellanies of links – small collections that range reasonably widely but still have a theme. These five are from left field, if not entirely from the left-hand end of that rather glib and facile left-right…
Mendelssohn, Joanna: Defying Empire: the legacy of 1967
Joanna Mendelssohn ‘Defying Empire: the legacy of 1967‘, The Conversation, 26 May 2017 Review of National Gallery of Australia exhibition on till 10 September. ‘Curator Tina Baum has woven a narrative and an argument around the legacy of that remarkable…
Yu, Ouyang: Billy Sing
Ouyang Yu Billy Sing, Transit Lounge, Melbourne, 2017 William “Billy” Sing was born in 1886 to an English mother and Chinese father. He and his two sisters were brought up in Clermont and Proserpine, in rural Queensland. He was one of…
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A gun that shoots right through history (review of Ouyang Yu on Billy Sing)
‘A gun that shoots right through history’, Honest History, 27 May 2017 Christina Spittel[*] reviews Ouyang Yu’s novel, Billy Sing Is there anything new to be said about Chinese-Australian sniper Billy Sing, who killed so many Turks at Gallipoli that…
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Gallagher, Emily: The first war for country, for nation
Emily Gallagher ‘The first war for country, for nation‘, Inside Story, 18 May 2017 A review of the For Country, For Nation exhibition at the Australian War Memorial. Another review, by David Stephens for Honest History, is here and should…
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Haslam, Nick: Aussies don’t always copy the US – unlike Americans, our self-esteem has stayed the same since the 70s
Nick Haslam ‘Aussies don’t always copy the US – unlike Americans, our self-esteem has stayed the same since the 70s‘, The Conversation, 11 May 2017 An article about Australian psychology over the decades, reviewing 141 studies of Australian self-esteem between 1978…
Pender, Margaret: High flying and capital crime between the wars: The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller (review of Baxter)
Margaret Pender* ‘High flying and capital crime between the wars: The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller’, Honest History, 2 May 2017 Margaret Pender reviews The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller, by Carol Baxter This is the story of Jessie ‘Chubbie’ Miller, the…
Baxter, Carol: The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller
Carol Baxter The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2017 When the young Jessie left suburban Melbourne and her newspaperman husband in 1927, little did she know that she’d become the first woman to complete an England to…
Goodall, Jane: Waking up a quiet country, five nights a week
Jane Goodall ‘Waking up a quiet country, five nights a week‘, Inside Story, 13 April 2017 Is it really 50 years since This Day Tonight started? The late Bill Peach, TDT’s first compere, had a good grasp on the significance…
Mnemosyne: online opportunity for feminist writers on the New South Wales South Coast
Mnemosyne is a new online journal wrangled by feminist writers on the south coast of New South Wales. It ‘celebrates the power and vitality of women’s storytelling and acknowledges the deep connection that many South Coast women, particularly Indigenous women,…
Grant, Bruce: Subtle Moments: Scenes on a Life’s Journey
Bruce Grant Subtle Moments: Scenes on a Life’s Journey, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2017 Veteran journalist and foreign affairs commentator writes about his long life and his views of the world. Bruce Grant was Australian High Commissioner to India (1973–76),…
Five points for John Clarke, also known as Fred Dagg, Trans-Tasman observer: incisive but no prick
The death of John Clarke, comedian and satirist, has brought forth some nice pieces of an obituarial bent. The present writer recalls snuffling with glee over Fred Dagg books and, a little later, chuckling at Farnarkling (a much more plausible…
McMullin, Ross: Bill Leak and Will Dyson: cartoonists and artists compared across a century
Ross McMullin* ‘Bill Leak and Will Dyson: cartoonists and artists compared across a century’, Honest History, 10 April 2017 When Bill Leak delivered a typically engaging presentation in Sydney a decade ago on the remarkably talented Australian cartoonist Will Dyson,…
Menadue, John: Our White Man’s Media again on display in London terrorist attack
John Menadue ‘Our White Man’s Media again on display in London terrorist attack‘, Pearls and Irritations, 27 March 2017 I have often commented that a person from Mars reading or listening to our media would conclude that Australia is an…
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Five easy pieces for weekend reading as the leaves start to fall
We at Honest History have been flat out promoting The Honest History Book but we found time to notice these: two articles (part 2) by HH distinguished supporter Richard Butler on the risks of Trump for Australia (Pearls and Irritations);…
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Allen, Christopher: Artists of the Great War: the pity and the propaganda
Christopher Allen ‘Artists of the Great War: the pity and the propaganda‘, The Australian, 18 March 2017 A review of a current exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (closes in June). We have not ceased to be fascinated…
Stephens, David: Allusions in Beanland: two exhibitions at the Australian War Memorial
David Stephens ‘Allusions in Beanland: two exhibitions at the Australian War Memorial‘, Honest History, 21 March 2017 updated This is a combined review of For Country, for Nation, about Indigenous service in defence of Australia, and A Home on a…
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Allusions in Beanland: two exhibitions at the Australian War Memorial
David Stephens ‘Allusions in Beanland: two exhibitions at the Australian War Memorial’, Honest History, 21 March 2017 In September 2016, the War Memorial opened For Country, for Nation, an exhibition about Indigenous service in Australian defence forces from the Boer…
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Turning the yellow South Australian hills green? Marian Quartly on a state of hope
‘Turning the yellow South Australian hills green? Marian Quartly on a state of hope’, Honest History, 21 March 2017 Marian Quartly* reviews Griffith Review 55: State of Hope Any collection of essays focussing on a single state of Australia will…
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Munro, Doug: ‘How illuminating it has been’: Matthews and McKenna, and their biographies of Manning Clark
Doug Munro “‘How illuminating it has been”: Matthews and McKenna, and their biographies of Manning Clark’, Philip Payton, ed., Emigrants & Historians: Essays in Honour of Eric Richards, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2016, pp. 98-131 (pdf made available courtesy of the…
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Schultz, Julianne & Patrick Allington, ed.: State of Hope: Griffith Review 55
Julianne Schultz & Patrick Allington, ed. State of Hope: Griffith Review 55, January 2017 As the industrial model that shaped twentieth-century South Australia is replaced by an uncertain future, now more than ever the state needs to draw on the…
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McKenna, Mark: The character business: On the deluge of political biography and memoir
Mark McKenna ‘The character business: on the deluge of political biography and memoir‘, The Monthly, February 2017, pp. 36-41 Discusses political biographies, autobiographies and diaries from Crossman on Crossman to David Marr on Kevin Rudd. Addresses interesting question of who…
Crotty, Martin: In their footsteps? Anzac fun runs and the consumption of the past
Martin Crotty ‘In their footsteps? Anzac fun runs and the consumption of the past’, Honest History, 7 February 2017 The author, a fun runner, describes some Anzac-themed running events and what they say about the current desire of some of…
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In their footsteps? Anzac fun runs and the consumption of the past
Martin Crotty* ‘In their footsteps? Anzac fun runs and the consumption of the past’, Honest History, 7 February 2017 Running for fun and Anzac I am an historian of Australia at war, a frequent commentator on the way Australia commemorates…
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O’Callaghan, Judith, Paul Hogben & Robert Freestone, eds: Sydney’s Martin Place: A Cultural and Design History
Judith O’Callaghan, Paul Hogben & Robert Freestone, eds Sydney’s Martin Place: A Cultural and Design History, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2016 The history of one of Australia’s most iconic urban precincts, from bustling colonial thoroughfare to imposing address for global…
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Crocket, Grahame: Centre of Sydney Town (review of O’Callaghan, Hogben & Freestone, eds)
Grahame Crocket* ‘Centre of Sydney Town’, Honest History, 7 February 2017 Grahame Crocket reviews Sydney’s Martin Place: A Cultural and Design History, edited by Judith O’Callaghan, Paul Hogben and Robert Freestone Why Sydney’s Martin Place has not been the subject…
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Hess, Rob: Growth of women’s football has been a 100-year revolution – it didn’t happen overnight
Rob Hess ‘Growth of women’s football has been a 100-year revolution – it didn’t happen overnight‘, The Conversation, 3 February 2017 Marks the commencement of the Australian Football League Women’s competition. Hess is co-author with Brunette Lenkić of Play On!…
McQueen, Humphrey: 26 January – or thereabouts
Humphrey McQueen ‘26 January – or thereabouts‘, Overland 233, Summer 2018 An earlier version of this piece was posted on the Honest History site on 23 January 2017, by courtesy of the author. Below are some of our introductory remarks…
McDonald, Neil with Peter Brune: Valiant for Truth: The Life of Chester Wilmot, War Correspondent
Neil McDonald with Peter Brune Valiant for Truth: The Life of Chester Wilmot, War Correspondent, NewSouth, Sydney, 2016 Chester Wilmot (1911–1954) was a renowned Australian war correspondent, broadcaster, journalist and writer. Covering the first triumphant North African battles of Bardia,…
Shield, John: Valiant for Truth: The Life of Chester Wilmot, War Correspondent (review of McDonald with Brune)
‘Valiant for Truth: The Life of Chester Wilmot, War Correspondent‘, Honest History, 12 January 2017 John Shield* reviews Valiant for Truth: The Life of Chester Wilmot, War Correspondent, by Neil McDonald with Peter Brune There is a lovely sequence in…
Silent Centenary: Australian voices questioning the war of 1914-18
Our regular correspondent, singer-songwriter, Tony Smith, has sent us a CD wrangled by himself and musical and poetical colleagues. It is called ‘Silent Centenary: Australian voices questioning the war of 1914-18’. It includes a mixture of sung songs, recited poems,…
Rizzetti, Janine: Contesting Australian history: a festschrift for Marilyn Lake
Janine Rizzetti ‘Contesting Australian History: a Festschrift for Marilyn Lake‘, The Resident Judge of Port Phillip, 13 December 2016 A report of this recent event held at the University of Melbourne in honour of Professor Marilyn Lake. The author mentions…
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Gainsborough, Vance: The animals and advertisements of Canberra: review of two new exhibitions
Vance Gainsborough* ‘The animals and advertisements of Canberra: review of two new exhibitions’, Honest History, 13 December 2016 The Popular Pet Show, National Portrait Gallery This exhibition has around 160 works by 15 artists, is open until March, and adults…
What Honest History read and reviewed during 2016: a round-up of book reviews (and reviewers)
‘What Honest History read and reviewed during 2016: a round-up of book reviews (and reviewers)’, Honest History, 13 December 2016 The Honest History team gets to read a lot of books during a year and we are getting more and…
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National Film and Sound Archive: Melbourne Time Capsule: Marvellous Melbourne: Swanston and Collins Streets
National Film and Sound Archive ‘Melbourne Time Capsule: Marvellous Melbourne: Swanston and Collins Streets‘, NFSA website A marvellous two minute point-of-view film from a tram trundling through Melbourne in 1910 (date picked exactly by our HH guru before he saw…
Snell, Ted: Long before Europeans, traders came here from the north and art tells the story
Snell, Ted ‘Long before Europeans, traders came here from the north and art tells the story‘, The Conversation, 24 November 2016 Indigenous oral tradition and bark and rock paintings have recorded the early visits of Macassan trepangers to northern Australia.…
Frances, Raelene & Bruce Scates, ed.: Beyond Gallipoli: New Perspectives on Anzac
Frances, Raelene & Bruce Scates, ed. Beyond Gallipoli: New Perspectives on Anzac, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2016 Much of the scholarship on the Great War, and especially the Dardanelles/Çanakkale campaign, has been viewed through a narrow national prism and focused…
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New views from a little way beyond Gallipoli (review of Scates & Frances ed., Beyond Gallipoli)
‘New views from a little way beyond Gallipoli’, Honest History, 21 November 2016 David Stephens reviews Beyond Gallipoli: New Perspectives on Anzac, edited by Raelene Frances and Bruce Scates This book is a collection of 15 papers (plus introduction) from…
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Sewell, Stephen: Friday essay: the arts and our still-born national identity
Sewell, Stephen ‘Friday essay: the arts and our still-born national identity‘, The Conversation, 18 November 2016 Wide-ranging essay from NIDA academic and commentator. Compares cuts to arts funding with spend on Anzac commemoration. But at the same time government spends heavily…
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Lesh, James: Preserving cities: how ‘trendies’ shaped Australia’s urban heritage
Lesh, James ‘Preserving cities: how “trendies” shaped Australia’s urban heritage‘, The Conversation, 4 November 2016 updated Looks at the heritage history of the inner suburbs of Australian cities since the 1960s. Until the mid-to-late 20th century, the Australian inner suburbs…
De Moore, Greg & Ann Westmore: Finding Sanity: John Cade, lithium and the taming of bipolar disorder
De Moore, Greg & Ann Westmore Finding Sanity: John Cade, Lithium and the Taming of Bipolar Disorder, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2016 The first biography of the ground breaking Australian doctor who discovered the first pharmacological treatment for mental illness.…
Wilson, Janet: Finding sanity: John Cade, lithium and the taming of bipolar disorder (review of De Moore and Westmore)
Janet Wilson* ‘Finding sanity: John Cade, lithium and the taming of bipolar disorder’ (review of De Moore and Westmore), Honest History, 3 November 2016 Janet Wilson reviews Finding Sanity, a new book by Greg de Moore and Ann Westmore John…
Piggott, Michael: Peace, love and world war: the Denmans, Empire and Australia, 1910–1917: a review of a Canberra exhibition
Michael Piggott* ‘”Peace, love and world war: the Denmans, Empire and Australia, 1910–1917″: a review of a Canberra exhibition’, Honest History, 1 November 2016 Note: The exhibition concludes on 13 November 2016 First, an admission. Actually, two. As a rule,…
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Brophy, Kevin: Friday essay: Judith Wright in a new light
Brophy, Kevin ‘Friday essay: Judith Wright in a new light‘, The Conversation, 28 October 2016 Everyone loves Judith Wright [Brophy begins]. Her poetry was consistently brilliant and stunningly lyrical. She opened Australian eyes in the 1940s to the possibilities of…
Monthly, The: Moran Prize finalists: finalists for the 2016 Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize
Monthly, The ‘Moran Prize finalists: finalists for the 2016 Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize‘, The Monthly, 24 October 2016 Something restful for the weekend, and not behind The Monthly‘s fierce pay-wall. (It has some good stuff, though.) There are about 30…
Griffiths, Tom: The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft
Griffiths, Tom The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2016 No matter how practised we are at history, it always humbles us. No matter how often we visit the past, it always surprises us. The art…
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An anthropologist, an historian and his historians: Diane Bell on Tom Griffiths
‘An anthropologist, an historian and his historians: Diane Bell on Tom Griffiths’, Honest History, 26 October 2016 Diane Bell* reviews Tom Griffiths, The Art of Time Travel: Historians and Their Craft Who is your favourite Australian historian? Why? In 14…
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Rees, Anne: How women historians smashed the glass ceiling
Rees, Anne ‘How women historians smashed the glass ceiling‘, The Conversation, 19 October 2016 Since the 1970s, the [history] profession has become conspicuous for the number of women in its ranks and the widespread acceptance of feminist scholarship. Compared to…
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Aileen Palmer and Maralinga: Honest History highlights reel
‘Aileen Palmer and Maralinga: Honest History highlights reel’, Honest History, 18 October 2016 updated This material has been made available by Sylvia Martin, author of Ink in Her Veins: The Troubled Life of Aileen Palmer, published earlier this year by…
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Rose, James: From Tampa to now: how reporting on asylum seekers has been a triumph of spin over substance
Rose, James ‘From Tampa to now: how reporting on asylum seekers has been a triumph of spin over substance‘, The Conversation, 14 October 2016 Considers three media management tactics deployed in 2001 and refined since: closing down news channels; depriving…
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McQueen, Humphrey: ‘A material triumph and an aesthetic calamity’: the work of Australian architect Robin Boyd’
McQueen, Humphrey ‘“A material triumph and an aesthetic calamity”: the work of Australian architect Robin Boyd’, Honest History, 11 October 2016 Humphrey McQueen wrote this article in 2002 on the 50th anniversary of the publication in 1952 of Robin Boyd’s…
‘A material triumph and an aesthetic calamity’: the work of Australian architect Robin Boyd
Humphrey McQueen ‘“A material triumph and an aesthetic calamity”: the work of Australian architect Robin Boyd’, Honest History, 11 October 2016 ‘A material triumph and an aesthetic calamity’ was how architect and cultural critic Robin Boyd summed up our domestic…
Roberts, Rhoda: There is no Aboriginal disadvantage. Our culture is our advantage, and all Australians can share it
Roberts, Rhoda ‘There is no Aboriginal disadvantage. Our culture is our advantage, and all Australians can share it‘, Guardian Australia, 7 October 2016 Article written to accompany Homeground cultural festival in Sydney. We have over 700 languages and dialects and…
Broinowski, Alison: Your laptop is watching you: Snowden the movie – review note
Broinowski, Alison* ‘Your laptop is watching you: Snowden the movie – review note’, Honest History, 26 September 2016 Before Snowden comes on, there’s a short film of Oliver Stone, the director, warning cinema audiences that they can be surveilled, so…
Haigh, Gideon: Stroke of Genius: Victor Trumper and the Shot that Changed Cricket
Haigh, Gideon Stroke of Genius: Victor Trumper and the Shot that Changed Cricket, Penguin Random House, Sydney, 2016 If Trumper is a legend, George Beldam’s ‘Jumping Out’ has become an icon. But that image has almost paradoxically obscured the story…
Federated Australia’s first champion (review of Haigh on Trumper)
‘Federated Australia’s first champion’ (review of Haigh on Trumper), Honest History, 25 September 2016 Derek Abbott* reviews Gideon Haigh’s book, Stroke of Genius: Victor Trumper and the Shot that Changed Cricket (2016) Muhammad Ali, young, brash and confident, mouth agape…
Dando-Collins, Stephen: The Hero Maker: A Biography of Paul Brickhill
Dando-Collins, Stephen The Hero Maker: A Biography of Paul Brickhill, Penguin Random House, Melbourne & Sydney, 2016 In The Hero Maker, award-winning historical author and biographer Stephen Dando-Collins exposes the contradictions of one of Australia’s most successful, but troubled, writers.…
Paul Brickhill: chronicler of bombers, busters and a great escape (review of Dando-Collins biography)
‘Paul Brickhill: chronicler of bombers, busters and a great escape’ (review of Dando-Collins biography), Honest History, 22 September 2016 John Myrtle* reviews The Hero Maker: A Biography of Paul Brickhill by Stephen Dando-Collins In the 1950s Australian-born Paul Brickhill wrote…
Online Gem No. 12: David Scott Mitchell and his library, a Sydney icon
Online Gem No. 12: David Scott Mitchell and his library, a Sydney icon, Honest History, 13 September 2016 David Scott Mitchell, born in Sydney in 1836, has been described as Australia’s greatest book collector. He was an early undergraduate of…
Life and work in the city and suburbs adds up to lots of Australian stories: Honest History miscellany
The Australian story has always had a gumleaves and distance tone to it even though most of us for most of our history have lived in cities. Yet our cities have grown so big and spread so far – as…
Flanagan, Richard: Australia has lost its way: The inaugural Boisbouvier Lecture, Melbourne Writers Festival 2016
Flanagan, Richard ‘Australia has lost its way: The inaugural Boisbouvier Lecture, Melbourne Writers Festival 2016’, The Monthly, 1 September 2016 This article, originally a lecture, is subtitled, ‘Does writing matter?’ The author says he does not believe in national literature,…
Clark, Anna: On listening to new national storytellers
Clark, Anna ‘Friday essay: on listening to new national storytellers’, The Conversation, 2 September 2016 The author reminds us that ‘each piece of history has a message and context that depends on who wrote it and when. As the US…
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Six of the best: recent posts on the future of history
Earlier this week we posted Neville Buch’s piece, ‘Do professional historians have a future?’ It has been very popular, with hundreds of views already. Serendipitously, blogs and online sources have thrown up lots of related material. Swansea University historian of…
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Buch, Neville: Do professional historians have a future?
Buch, Neville ‘Do professional historians have a future?‘ Honest History, 30 August 2016 The author, a professional historian based in Queensland, looks at statistics for tertiary history courses. He spells out the need to grow the non-academic employment market for…
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Moore, Bruce: Anzackery and other Australianisms: Australian National Dictionary second edition
Bruce Moore ‘Anzackery and other Australianisms: Australian National Dictionary second edition’, Honest History, 30 August 2016 The first edition of this dictionary came out in 1988 in one volume. Now there is a two volume second edition. Chief Editor Bruce…
Baker, Mark: Phillip Schuler: The remarkable life of one of Australia’s greatest war correspondents
Baker, Mark Phillip Schuler: The Remarkable Life of One of Australia’s Greatest War Correspondents, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2016 A biography of The Age war correspondent, who reported unofficially from Egypt in 1914-15, spent time at Gallipoli, producing two ground-breaking…
Disappointing take on an interesting man (review of Baker on Phillip Schuler)
‘Disappointing take on an interesting man’, Honest History, 30 August 2016 Kristen Alexander* reviews Mark Baker’s Phillip Schuler: The Remarkable Life of One of Australia’s Greatest War Correspondents Phillip Schuler was a journalist working at Melbourne’s Age newspaper when the…
Lord Northcliffe (egged on by Keith Murdoch) talks up the Anzacs after Pozieres: Honest History document
‘“These young giants from the furthest corner of the earth”: Lord Northcliffe (egged on by Keith Murdoch) talks up the Anzacs after Pozières: Honest History document’, Honest History, 30 August 2016 The document below is taken from The Sun (Sydney)…
Anzackery and other Australianisms: Australian National Dictionary second edition
Bruce Moore ‘Anzackery and other Australianisms: Australian National Dictionary second edition’, Honest History, 30 August 2016 The new edition of the Australian National Dictionary has been published. The first edition, published in 1988, was a one-volume work of 814 pages.…
Do professional historians have a future?
Neville Buch ‘Do professional historians have a future?’ Honest History, 30 August 2016 Peter Mandler argued in his 2015 Aeon essay that the ‘crisis in the humanities’ since the 1950s has never existed except in the minds of humanities professors.[1]…
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Gaita, Raimond: Reflections on the idea of a common humanity
Gaita, Raimond ‘Friday essay: reflections on the idea of a common humanity‘, The Conversation, 12 August 2016 Gaita argues that ‘to recognise the humanity of others we must rise to the humanity in ourselves, but to do that we must…
Schultz, Julianne, ed.: Our sporting life: Griffith Review 53
Schultz, Julianne, ed. ‘Our sporting life’, Griffith Review, 53, August 2016, available online to subscribers Collection of essays on something which, we are told, ‘lies at the heart of what it means to be Australian’. At a time when sport…
Many codes, many circuses, much money: Griffith Review 53: Our sporting life
‘Many codes, many circuses, much money: Griffith Review 53: “Our sporting life”’, Honest History, 9 August 2016 A review by Derek Abbott* of the latest Griffith Review, published 1 August 2016. Griffith Review always presents a collection of writings that…
From the Honest History archives: Hiroshima 1945; Managing Hiroshima
Update 31 August 2016: an article on The Millions website commemorating the 70th anniversary of the publication in The New Yorker of John Hersey’s long article Hiroshima. The anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings tends to creep up on…
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Rizzetti, Janine: Graeme Davison on visions of the future
Rizzetti, Janine ‘Graeme Davison on visions of the future‘, The Resident Judge of Port Phillip, 31 July 2016 Nice piece from this excellent blog. It riffs off an exhibition in Melbourne (about to close) and an article by Graeme Davison…
Sparrow, Jeff: The greyhound ban and the working man: what exactly does “working class culture” mean?
Sparrow, Jeff ‘The greyhound ban and the working man: what exactly does “working class culture” mean?‘ Guardian Australia, 21 July 2016 Explores the idea that the proposed ban on greyhound racing in New South Wales will particularly affect something called…
From the Honest History archives: Doug Hynd from January 2015 on aspects of the Martin Place siege of 2014
Doug Hynd has lectured in Christian ethics at Charles Sturt University and is now in the final stages of a PhD at the Australian Catholic University. In this short piece written just after the Martin Place (Lindt) siege, he considers…
Viner, Katharine: How technology disrupted the truth
Katharine Viner ‘How technology disrupted the truth‘, The Guardian, 12 July 2016 updated More than 1500 comments on this article by Guardian editor-in-chief about how ‘[s]ocial media has swallowed the news – threatening the funding of public-interest reporting and ushering…
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Halford, James: Reading three great southern lands: from the outback to the pampa and the karoo
Halford, James ‘Reading three great southern lands: from the outback to the pampa and the karoo‘, The Conversation, 11 July 2016 The common threads of the literature of Argentina, Australia and South Africa as presented in the work of a…
Five uneasy pieces on the mainstream media and the election
Update 3 August 2016: Richard Denniss in The Monthly on Brexit, election, perceptions, the media and the whole damn thing. Update 22 July 2016: Sean Kelly in The Monthly Today on some of the issues below. ____________ The founder of…
Acquroff, Nick: Westography: images of a vanished suburbia
Acquroff, Nick ‘Westography: images of a vanished suburbia‘, Broadsheet, 5 July 2016 This is a story about a book of photographs, Westography, by Warren Kirk. The pictures are taken around the inner western suburbs of Melbourne. There are a dozen…
Marks, Russell: An impoverished estate (media and politics)
Marks, Russell ‘An impoverished estate‘, The Monthly, 5 July 2016 The sub-heading reads ‘The Australian media prioritised personality over policy during this election campaign’. Honest History has avoided running ‘horse-race’ stories about this election campaign, punting (sorry) instead for the…
Sharpe, Matthew: Battle of the Somme and the death of martial glory
Sharpe, Matthew ‘Friday Essay: The Battle of the Somme and the death of martial glory‘, The Conversation, 1 July 2016 Commemorating the death today 100 years ago of over 19 000 British soldiers in a stupid venture. The generals learnt…
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Canberra’s Demos is a newish and feisty online voice with wide-ranging content
Honest History is always on the lookout for media outlets which take a punt and launch into new territory, particularly if the venture looks professional and takes – or facilitates – firm, evidence-based positions. (We try to do a bit…
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Review note: Meanjin short of funds but maintains high quality
‘Review note: Meanjin short of funds but maintains high quality’, Honest History, 17 June 2016 Meanjin Quarterly has been around since 1940 but now it is struggling for funds as the Australia Council cuts its cloth to fit reduced funding…
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Midwinter (almost) Miscellany from Honest History (info-brokers to the gentry)
Illness has cut a swathe through the Honest History engine-room this week so the remaining HH elves have been forced to bundle some useful links together below. The bundling exercise also warmed us up in an unusually cold Canberra early…
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Review note: The Soldier’s Curse by Meg and Tom Keneally
‘Review note: The Soldier’s Curse: Book One, The Monsarrat Series, by Meg and Tom Keneally’, Honest History, 13 June 2016 Gentle Reader reviews a Keneally family enterprise published by Vintage Random House. Tom Keneally is not only prolific but also…
Steele, Colin: How The Sex Lives of Australians upset a PM and the PM’s Literary Awards
Steele, Colin ‘How The Sex Lives of Australians upset a PM and the PM’s Literary Awards‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 June 2016 updated Update 23 June 2016: Patrick Allington in The Conversation discusses the issues. The author of this article…
Macarthur, Sally, Cat Hope & Dawn Bennett: Why aren’t Australia’s female composers being heard?
Macarthur, Sally, Cat Hope & Dawn Bennett ‘The sound of silence: why aren’t Australia’s female composers being heard?‘ The Conversation, 31 May 2016 Since 1987, 47 composers have been commissioned to write for the nation’s leading chamber music ensemble. and…
Wolf, Charlie & Athol Bittley: AFL club songs ranked by ambition and boastfulness
Wolf, Charlie & Athol Bittley ‘AFL club songs ranked by ambition and boastfulness‘, Thermocow, 27 May 2016 Now that we’ve got your attention … This article on a comedy blog is just a bit of fun but go beyond the…
Tan, Monica: Nicholas Allbrook on Australia’s national anthem: ‘It’s ignorant and isolationist’
Tan, Monica ‘Pond’s Nicholas Allbrook on Australia’s national anthem: “It’s ignorant and isolationist”‘, Guardian Australia, 26 May 2016 Views of a 28-year-old rock singer with a range of comments beneath. Nicholas Allbrook, in his latest release ‘replaces the nation-fortifying intentions…
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Bruns, Axel: A first draft of the present: Why we must preserve social media content
Bruns, Axel ‘A first draft of the present: Why we must preserve social media content‘, The Conversation, 16 May 2016 History is written on the basis of records that survive and are accessible. Even journalism has traditionally been described as…
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Online Gem No. 9: Peter Norman: Australia’s greatest male sprinter (17 May 2016)
‘Online Gem No. 9: Peter Norman: Australia’s greatest male sprinter’, Honest History, 17 May 2016 updated Peter Norman (born 1942) was a remarkable Australian athlete. Through his achievement at the Mexico Olympic Games and his response to that achievement he…
ABC RN The Drawing Room: How Greeks Americanised Australia
ABC RN ‘How Greeks Americanised Australia‘, The Drawing Room, 22 March 2016 A tribute (audio, no transcript) to Paragon Cafes throughout the wide brown land. Effy Alexakis and Leonard Janiszewski talk to Patricia Karvelas about their extensive work on Greek…
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McLean, Ian: With secrecy and despatch (review of exhibition)
McLean, Ian ‘With secrecy and despatch‘, Artlink, April 2016 This is a review of an exhibition (With Secrecy and Despatch, 9 April-12 June) at the Campbelltown Arts Centre on Australian and Canadian contemporary Indigenous art. It also touches on When…
Doyle, Brian: The national sport
Doyle, Brian ‘The national sport‘, The American Scholar, 15 April 2016 An American offers a note on Australian football – and does it in one long, lyrical paragraph. He is from the Pacific North-West so perhaps we should expect this.…
Daley, Paul: Canberra’s vision of the ideal city gets mired in ‘mediocrity’
Paul Daley ‘Story of cities #17: Canberra’s vision of the ideal city gets mired in “mediocrity”‘, Guardian, 7 April 2016 Long article for London Guardian about the history of Canberra. Daley has written a book on the city also. This…
Online gem No. 8: Betty Cuthbert, champion athlete (12 April 2016)
‘Online gem No. 8: Betty Cuthbert, champion athlete (12 April 2016)’, Honest History, 12 April 2016 Update 25 July 2016: one aspect of the 1956 Olympics was the TV coverage, which created its own issues but set the early parameters…
Smith, Tony: I didn’t raise my son to be a soldier
Smith, Tony ‘“I didn’t raise my son to be a soldier”: a presentation to the National Folklore Conference, Canberra, Easter 2016‘, Australian Folklore Network, April 2016 Starts from the broad context of the Anzac centenary, looks at the range of…
Barnwell, Ashley: The Secret River, silences and our nation’s history
Barnwell, Ashley ‘The Secret River, silences and our nation’s history‘, The Conversation, 28 March 2016 Explores the controversy surrounding the current stage adaptation of Kate Grenville’s novel, The Secret River. This controversy extends that associated with the original book: it…
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Mendelssohn, Joanna: Breaking the silence: Australia must acknowledge a violent past
Mendelssohn, Joanna ‘Breaking the silence: Australia must acknowledge a violent past‘, The Conversation, 7 March 2016 Review of the exhibition, ‘When silence falls‘, at the Art Gallery of NSW till 1 May. From the northern tip of Cape York to…
Gillespie, Mark: Sydney Mardi Gras march of 1978
Gillespie, Mark ‘Friday essay: on the Sydney Mardi Gras march of 1978‘, The Conversation, 19 February 2016 updated Considers whether the original Mardi Gras marchers should get a formal apology. A motion calling for an apology was adopted unanimously in…
A man of the mind: John Hirst 1942-2016
Michael Piggott ‘A man of the mind: John Hirst 1942-2016’, Honest History, 16 February 2016 Honest History has, over the past two years, praised and criticised various institutions’ and authors’ representations of the past, but rarely looked at an historian…
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Piggott, Michael: A man of the mind: John Hirst 1942-2016
Piggott, Michael ‘A man of the mind: John Hirst 1942-2016‘, Honest History, 16 February 2016 Honest History committee member and distinguished archivist, Michael Piggott, reviews the work of John Hirst, who died recently. This obituary draws on the tributes of…
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Singing country: the importance of the song On every Anzac Day
David Stephens ‘Singing country: the musical legacy of David Morrison, Australian of the Year – and a straw in the wind at the Australian War Memorial?’, Honest History, 2 February 2016 Before David Morrison became Australian of the Year he…
Stephens, David: Singing country: the importance of the song On every Anzac Day
Stephens, David ‘Singing country: the musical legacy of David Morrison, Australian of the Year – and a straw in the wind at the Australian War Memorial?’, Honest History, 2 February 2016 The article looks at the story behind the song…
Dean, Peter J.: Complexity and limitations of Australian army biography
Dean, Peter J. ‘Commemoration, memory, and forgotten histories: complexity and limitations of Australian army biography‘, War and Society, 29, 2, October 2010, pp. 118-36 Addresses the question ‘how far has biography been utilized in understanding the history of the Australian…
O’Regan, Tom: Kenneth Slessor, poet and movie critic
O’ Regan, Tom ‘Kenneth Slessor goes to the movies‘, Inside Story, 4 January 2016 Renowned Australian poet and war correspondent, Kenneth Slessor, also liked going to ‘the pictures’ and writing about it in a special way, according to O’Regan in…
Vaughan, Jill, Katie Jepson & Rosey Billington: Different words, same things
Vaughan, Jill, Katie Jepson & Rosey Billington ‘Togs or swimmers? Why Australians use different words to describe the same things‘, The Conversation, 5 January 2016 Uses maps to show the different words used by Australians to describe common items. It’s…
Cahill, Rowan: two poets (Denis Kevans & Henry Weston Pryce) – review essay
Rowan Cahill ‘Two poets (Denis Kevans and Henry Weston Pryce), war and a manuscript: a review essay’, Honest History, 17 December 2015 In the Special Collections of the Australian Defence Force Academy’s (ADFA) Academic Library is a manuscript by poet…
Review note: where are all the war books this Anzac centenary Christmas?
‘Review note: where are all the war books this Anzac centenary Christmas?’ Honest History, 13 December 2015 Any bookshop these days seems to include a lot of military history books. The present reviewer is duty bound (as a website wrangler)…
Vatsikopoulos, Helen: Australian women war reporters (review of Baker)
Vatsikopoulos, Helen ‘Australian Women War Reporters review: how female journalists made it to battle‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 December 2015 Reviews Jeannine Baker’s Australian Women War Reporters: Boer War to Vietnam. Australian women journalists might have been granted equal pay…
Grishin, Sasha: Tom Roberts at the National Gallery of Australia
Grishin, Sasha ‘Art review: Tom Roberts at the National Gallery of Australia, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 December 2015 Reviews the recently opened exhibition, which is open until March 2016. The chief aim of this exhibition is to take a fresh…
Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka, ed.: Miles Franklin writings from the Balkans war
Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka (Millicent), ed. ‘Writings from the Balkan Theatre of War by Miles Franklin (Extracted from the Archives of the Mitchell Library)’, Transcultural Studies: A Series in Interdisciplinary Research, Special Issue: The Serbs and Miles Franklin in World War I…
Bell, Diane: Miles Franklin and the Serbs still matter: a review essay
Diane Bell* ‘Miles Franklin and the Serbs still matter: a review essay’, Honest History, 1 December 2015 [Publication details of the work reviewed: Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka. (Editor). (2014). ‘Writings from the Balkan Theatre of War by Miles Franklin (Extracted from the Archives…
Going to the Flicks, Brisbane, November 1915
‘Going to the Flicks, Brisbane, November 1915: highlights reel’, Honest History, 1 December 2015 Brisbane Courier 26 November 1915 26 November 1915 was a Friday and it was the final night of the ‘stirring military program’ at the Strand Theatre…
Daley, Paul: Vietnam veteran who never really returned
Daley, Paul ‘“He should have died”: the Vietnam veteran who never really returned‘, Guardian Australia, 25 November 2015 Partly a review of historian Michael McKernan’s memoir (When this Thing Happened) about his brother-in-law, Joe Stawyskyj, a national servicemen, injured for…
Verghis, Sharon: Tom Roberts at the National Gallery
Verghis, Sharon ‘Tom Roberts masterpieces on show at the National Gallery, Canberra‘, The Australian, 21 November 2015 Detailed background article on the exhibition which opens at the NGA on 4 December, gathering works from many state galleries. On show will…
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Cochrane, Peter: Keith Murdoch and the birth of a dynasty
Cochrane, Peter ‘Book review: Before Rupert: Keith Murdoch and the birth of a dynasty‘, The Conversation, 13 November 2015 Cochrane reviews this new book by Tom DC Roberts. The book starts with Murdoch’s ‘Gallipoli letter’ but goes much further. It is…
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Monteath, Peter & Valerie Munt: Red Professor
Monteath, Peter & Valerie Munt Red Professor: the Cold War Life of Fred Rose, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2015 Fred Rose’s life takes us through rip-roaring tales from Australia’s northern frontier to enthralling intellectual tussles over kinship systems and political dramas…
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Moses, John: Red professor in a cold war
John Moses* ‘Red professor in a cold war’ (review of Monteath and Munt), Honest History, 28 October 2015 John Moses reviews Red Professor: the Cold War Life of Fred Rose, by Peter Monteath and Valerie Munt In an extensively researched…
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Lever, Susan: Lawrence’s Australian experiment
Lever, Susan ‘Lawrence’s Australian experiment‘, Inside Story, 22 October 2015 Almost a century on, there is still a nagging feeling that DH Lawrence, in some ways the archetypal ‘Pom passing through’ (he was here for just three months), still ‘got’…
McKinney, JP: Crucible
McKinney, JP Crucible: a Novel of an Australian in World War I, BWM Books, Canberra, 2012; first published Angus & Robertson 1935; available electronically Insightful, humorous and confronting, “Crucible” is a delicate portrait of the thoughts and emotions of a…
Into the crucible (review of McKinney)
‘Into the crucible’ (review of McKinney), Honest History, 20 October 2015 Christina Spittel reviews JP McKinney’s Crucible, republished in 2012 after 77 years ‘It is curious’, writes Rodney Hall in the Australian Book Review, ‘that the Great War (generally credited…
Canberra Youth Theatre & Long Cloud Youth Theatre, New Zealand: Dead Men’s Wars
Canberra Youth Theatre & Long Cloud Youth Theatre, New Zealand Dead Men’s Wars A play by Ralph McCubbin Howell, directed by Brett Adam, a joint Aotearoa New Zealand-Australia production, which premiered in Canberra, 14 October 2015 with support from The…
Trans-Tasman youth production asks important questions about Anzac
‘Trans-Tasman youth production asks important questions about Anzac’, Honest History, 15 October 2015 David Stephens reviews Dead Men’s Wars by Ralph McCubbin Howell, presented by Canberra Youth Theatre (Australia) and Long Cloud Youth Theatre (New Zealand) Like another co-production a…
Anonymous (Frank Morton?): new use for Central Australia? (highlights reel)
Anonymous (Frank Morton?) ‘A new use for Central Australia: it’s “potentialities” as a scrapping ground‘, The Triad, 10 March 1917 This semi-humorous piece, apparently just the single page, suggests that Central Australia would provide a more spacious, less cluttered battleground…
Online gem No. 2: Royalty in the Australian Women’s Weekly
Online gem No. 2: Royalty in the Australian Women’s Weekly (13 October 2015) In September 2015 Queen Elizabeth II became the longest-reigning monarch in British history. During the Queen’s long reign many Australians have maintained a particular fascination with her…
Hardie, Giles: Australians’ addiction to family dramas
Hardie, Giles ‘Why Australians are addicted to family dramas‘, New Daily, 7 October 2015 Summaries of 40 years of the ‘most iconic’ Australian TV soap operas. As a country, we’ve long loved drama series but our family dramas have a special…
Delaney, Brigid: Cold Chisel’s unofficial national anthems
Delaney, Brigid ‘Cold Chisel: writing Australia’s unofficial national anthems since 1973‘, Guardian Australia, 6 October 2015 Historical look at the songs of an Australian rock band. Cold Chisel’s lyrics always felt like stories – Carveresque with an Australian accent –…
‘After all these years’: Wilfred Burchett highlights reel
‘After all these years: Wilfred Burchett highlights reel’, Honest History, 30 September 2015 Wilfred Burchett shouldered his way back into Honest History’s consideration recently, first, when we revived his justly famous article about Hiroshima and, secondly, when we were pointed…
Wilfred Burchett recalled by Rupert Lockwood: highlights reel (II)
‘Wilfred Burchett recalled by Rupert Lockwood: highlights reel (II)’, Honest History, 30 September 2015 This post follows on from our earlier extracts from a long, undated (but circa 1994) essay by Rupert Lockwood (1908-97), another Australian internationalist, in which he…
Nolan, Melanie: Coral Magnolia Lansbury 1929-1991
Nolan, Melanie ‘Coral Magnolia Lansbury, 1929-1991‘, Australian Dictionary of Biography, online edition, 2015 Coral Lansbury was a distinguished Australian radio scriptwriter, academic and novelist. Her son, Malcolm Bligh Turnbull, is Australia’s 29th prime minister. Nolan also presented a seminar on…
Victoria, Brian: war remembrance in Japan (two parts)
Victoria, Brian ‘War remembrance in Japan’s Buddhist cemeteries, Part I: Kannon hears the cries of war‘, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Vol. 13, Issue 31, No. 3, August 3, 2015; ‘Part II: Transforming war criminals into Martyrs: “true words” on Mt.…
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Arrow, Michelle: Damned Whores and God’s Police 40 years on
Arrow, Michelle ‘Damned Whores and God’s Police is still relevant to Australia 40 years on – more’s the pity‘, The Conversation, 21 September 2015 The article marks four decades since Anne Summers’ book. A conference is under way. Anne Summers’…
Manne, Anne, Robyn Davidson & Raimond Gaita: films from books
[Manne, Anne, Robyn Davidson & Raimond Gaita] ‘Words and images: Robyn Davidson and Raimond Gaita on film adaptation‘, The Monthly, 21 September 2015 In this La Trobe University Ideas and Society event at the Bendigo Writers Festival 2015, authors Robyn…
Review note: commemoration theme sits lightly on an old Canberra perennial
‘Review note: commemoration theme sits lightly on an old Canberra perennial’, Honest History, 22 September 2015 When an event has been going for 27 years it will be looking for new twists. Canberra’s venerable Floriade spring festival has done night-time…
Hynd, Doug: St Mark’s remembers Anzac Day (review)
Hynd, Doug ‘St Mark’s remembers Anzac Day’, Honest History, 19 September 2015 Doug Hynd reviews the April 2015 issue of St Mark’s Review, published by St Mark’s National Theological Centre, Canberra. The table of contents of the issue are here…
St Mark’s remembers Anzac Day
‘St Mark’s remembers Anzac Day’, Honest History, 19 September 2015 Doug Hynd reviews the April 2015 issue of St Mark’s Review __________________________ This thematic issue ‘St Mark’s remembers’ on ‘remembering Anzac Day’ is, in the best sense of the term,…
Stephens, David: three Canberra art exhibitions (review)
Stephens, David ‘Less twaddling by the lake: three art exhibitions in Canberra‘, Honest History, 16 September 2015 A review of Reality in flames at the Australian War Memorial, Heroes and villians: William Strutt’s Australia at the National Library of Australia…
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Less twaddling by the lake: three Canberra art exhibitions
David Stephens ‘Less twaddling by the lake: three art exhibitions in Canberra’, Honest History, 16 September 2015 The three exhibitions covered in this review offer a multi-hued picture of parts of our history. The first show, Reality in flames, has…
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Gorman, Sean, et al.: Griffith Review: Indigenous writing
Gorman, Sean, et al ‘Indigenous writing’, Griffith Review We apologise for not discovering this portal earlier. It links (at the time of posting, September 2015) to 54 articles from Griffith Review on Indigenous affairs and another 33 articles from the…
Last orders, Mr James (review of Clive James’ Latest Readings)
‘Last orders, Mr James’, Honest History, 1 September 2015 Paddy Gourley* reviews Clive James, Latest Readings If Clive James had written nothing other than his book Cultural Amnesia he would have secured a prominent place in Australian letters. It’s a…
Summers, Julie: Fashion on the ration: style in the Second World War
Summers, Julie Fashion on the Ration: Style in the Second World War, Profile Books, London, 2015 From the young woman who avoided the dreaded ‘forces bloomers’ by making knickers from military-issue silk maps, to Vogue’s indomitable editor Audrey Withers, who…
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Finding a thing to wear during World War II (review of Julie Summers)
‘Finding a thing to wear during World War II’, Honest History, 1 September 2015 Janet Wilson* reviews Fashion on the Ration: Style in the Second World War by Julie Summers This book accompanied an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum…
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James, Clive: Latest Readings
James, Clive Latest Readings, Yale University Press, New Haven CT & London, 2015 In 2010, Clive James was diagnosed with terminal leukemia. Deciding that “if you don’t know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as…
Wilfred Burchett recalled by Rupert Lockwood: highlights reel (I)
‘Wilfred Burchett recalled by Rupert Lockwood: highlights reel (I)’, Honest History, 1 September 2015 Recently we ran Wilfred Burchett’s famous report of the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. That post included some links to material on this enigmatic…
Diamond, Marion: street names and naming conventions
Diamond, Marion ‘Street names and naming conventions‘, Historians are Past Caring, 20 August 2015 Whimsical but well-informed piece about how our capital city streets came to get the names they bear today. Street names say a lot about who and…
Battistella, Edwin: how to write a compelling book review
Battistella, Edwin ‘How to write a compelling book review‘, OUPBlog, 11 August 2015 We normally write and/or publish the things but this seemed such good advice we thought we’d post it for the edification of all. The author kicks off…
Rollison, Kay: Hugh Stretton remembered
Rollison, Kay ‘Book review: Ideas for Australian Cities, by Hugh Stretton‘, Australian Independent Media Network, 11 August 2015 Marks the death last month at 91 of Australian public intellectual, Hugh Stretton, author of the pioneering The Political Sciences (1969), Ideas…
Wilfred Burchett in Hiroshima: highlights reel
‘Wilfred Burchett in Hiroshima: highlights reel’, Honest History, 9 August 2015 Today is the 70th anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. By the end of 1945 up to 80 000 people in Nagasaki had died…
Great War chaplains after the tumult and shouting
‘Great War chaplains after the tumult and shouting’, Honest History, 4 August 2015 John A. Moses* reviews Linda Parker’s Shellshocked Prophets: Former Anglican Army Chaplains in Inter-War Britain _______________________________________ At a time when all denominations are being pilloried for the…
Two Australians of the Year: highlights reel
‘Two Australians of the Year: highlights reel’, Honest History, 1 August 2015 Adam Goodes, AFL footballer and Indigenous activist, was Australian of the Year 2013. Rosie Batty, mother and domestic violence activist, was Australian of the Year 2014. Both have…
Australian War Memorial: Reality in Flames
Australian War Memorial Reality in Flames: Modern Australian Art & the Second World War Opened on 3 July 2015, this is ‘the first exhibition dedicated exclusively to exploring how Australian modernist artists responded creatively to the Second World War’. Modern…
Kidd, Briony: Australian female film directors
Kidd, Briony ‘Reading between the credits for Australian women directors‘, SBS Movies, 14 July 2015 Asks why women film-makers are consistently overlooked in Australian cinema. Examines possible answers to this question, looks at some history, discusses the work of many…
Broinowski, Alison: Officially acceptable war history
Broinowski, Alison ‘Officially acceptable war history‘, Honest History, 11 July 2015 The article discusses the projected official histories of the Australian involvements in East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq. Dr Broinowski is Vice President of Honest History and of Australians for…
Officially acceptable war history
Alison Broinowski ‘Officially acceptable war history’, Honest History, 11 July 2015 The government is soon to announce who will write the official history of Australia’s three latest military interventions in East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq. The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs,…
Terzis, Gillian: hashtag activism and online grief
Terzis, Gillian ‘Death trends: hashtag activism and the rise of online grief‘, Kill Your Darlings, July 2015 Our constant connection to the news and to the opinions of others means that grief can easily become a viral phenomenon … I…
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McQueen, Humphrey: 1977 piece on the early days of Quadrant
McQueen, Humphrey ‘Quadrant and the CIA’, Gallipoli to Petrov: Arguing with Australian History, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1984, pp. 180-95 (pdf of out-of-copyright material made available by the author) This piece was originally written in 1977. (You will need…
Daley, Paul: aboriginal activist AM Fernando in London
Daley, Paul ‘Anthony Martin Fernando: the Aboriginal activist who took his people’s fight to London‘, Guardian Australia, 3 July 2015 [Fernando] is probably the first Indigenous Australian to dedicate his life to activism in Europe … His attempt to petition…
Review note: Penleigh Boyd’s Salvage
‘Review note: Penleigh Boyd’s Salvage – sketching and writing on the Western Front’, Honest History, 7 July 2015 Theodore Penleigh Boyd (1890-1923) was a landscape artist and member of the multi-talented Boyd family. The Wikipedia entry is also useful. Bridge…
Torre, Dan: century of Australian animation
Torre, Dan ‘From ads to Oscar winners: a century of Australian animation‘, The Conversation, 26 June 2015 2015 is one hundred years since Harry Julius began ‘Cartoons of the Moment’, animations accompanying feature films shown in Australia and New Zealand.…
Moore, Tony: Australian-style cultural subversion
Moore, Tony ‘Larrikin carnival: an Australian style of cultural subversion‘, The Conversation, 23 June 2015 The article is based on an essay in the collection On Happiness, which launched this month. I want to recast happiness as a form of…
Bosler, Danae: Australian novels by radical women
Bosler, Danae ‘Labour in vain: the forgotten novels of Australia’s radical women‘, Overland, 16 June 2015 Brief survey of novels by Betty Collins, Jean Devanny, Dorothy Hewett, Amanda Lohrey and others. These novels are seminal Australian texts because of their…
Curby, Pauline: Urban myth or surfing history?
Curby, Pauline ‘An urban myth or surfing history?‘, Honest History, 17 June 2015 The author explores the story surrounding a famous change to the rules regarding sea-bathing in pre-Great War Sydney. As this story is part of our surfing history,…
Urban myth or surfing history?
Pauline Curby ‘An urban myth or surfing history?’ Honest History, 17 June 2015 The Australian Dictionary of Biography is a marvellous resource, especially since it has been available online. Written by a wide range of authors, its entries sometimes require…
Moorehead, Alan: Gallipoli
Moorehead, Alan Gallipoli, Harper Collins, New York, 2002 and many other editions First published nearly 60 years ago, this classic is still in print. It is recalled by Ann Moyal for Honest History. Moorehead’s daughter (and writer) Caroline reminiscences in…
Moyal, Ann: Alan Moorehead’s Gallipoli
Ann Moyal ‘Alan Moorehead’s Gallipoli’, Honest History, 9 June 2015 Recalling an Anzac classic, first published in 1956. There have been at least some 70 books by individual authors published under the title Gallipoli in the century since. From the…
McQueen, Humphrey: on CJ Dennis (1977)
McQueen, Humphrey ‘Sentimental thoughts of “A moody bloke”‘, Gallipoli to Petrov: Arguing with Australian History, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1984, pp. 23-34 (pdf of out-of-copyright material made available by the author) This piece was originally written in 1977. (You…
Djubal, Clay et al, ed.: World War I in Australian literary culture
Djubal, Clay, Catriona Mills, Robert Thomson & Kerry Kilner, ed. ‘World War I in Australian literary culture: from the first shot to the centenary‘, AustLit This is a major research project on the way World War I has featured in…
Smith, Tony: The Peace Angel (anti-war song)
Smith, Tony ‘The Peace Angel’, Honest History, 29 May 2015 The song (lyrics below by Tony Smith) is sung here by Gene Smith. Maggie Thorp (Margaret Sturge Watts) was a Quaker and a life-long agitator and worker for progressive causes.…
Wilson, AN: The Book of the People
Wilson, AN The Book of the People: How to Read the Bible, Atlantic Books, London, 2015 A. N. Wilson has been thinking about the Bible, and reading it, since he read theology for a year at university. Martin Luther King…
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Still the good book? (review of AN Wilson)
‘Still the good book?’ Honest History, 27 May 2015 David Stephens reviews AN Wilson’s The Book of the People: How to Read the Bible My grandmother was 96 when she died. Her eulogy mentioned that she had read her Bible…
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Meyrick, Julian: Australian plays and questioning the nation’s soul
Meyrick, Julian ‘Australian plays: how to persuade a nation to question its own soul?‘ The Conversation, 12 May 2015 The fourth in a series of long essays on Australian play-writing. The earlier ones are linked from this article. I could…
Honest History poet: Mary Gilmore
‘Honest History poet: Mary Gilmore, two wars, four poems’, Honest History, 12 May 2015 Mary Gilmore (born Cameron) was born in 1865, spent a few years in South America seeking utopia, married and had a child, was a friend of…
Anzac-ed out 2015
Willy Bach ‘Anzac-ed out 2015’, Honest History, 5 May 2015 As we know…. They shall grow not old, Lives cut short Terminated Denied parenthood Pleasure, creativity Reflection Grandchildren as we that are left grow old: Lamely, sullenly Prematurely Age shall…
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Bach, Willy: Anzac-ed out 2015
Bach, Willy ‘Anzac-ed out 2015‘, Honest History, 5 May 2015 Willy Bach is a postgraduate research student, School of History, University of Queensland. He says this poem was written ‘in response to the tidal wave of ANZAC promotion’. He has…
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Anderson, Fay: We censor war photography in Australia
Fay Anderson ‘We censor war photography in Australia – more’s the pity‘, The Conversation, 4 May 2015 You may have noticed we recently marked the centenary of Anzac. One hundred years after Gallipoli, we are seeing photographs of telegenic young…
ABC News 24 One-plus-One: with Clare Wright
ABC TV ‘Clare Wright‘, ABC News 24 One-plus-One, 24 April 2015 (video only) Historian Clare Wright talks with Jane Hutcheon about her early life, her early work on women in the liquor industry, her Stella Prize-winning book The Forgotten Rebels…
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McQueen, Humphrey: the novels of Eleanor Dark (1973)
McQueen, Humphrey ‘The novels of Eleanor Dark’, Hemisphere, 17, 1, January 1973, pp. 38-41 (pdf of out-of-copyright material made available by the author) The piece is interesting as a relatively early discussion of this writer (1901-85) and as an indication…
Honest History list: boozing cricketers/boozing Anzac
Australian cricketers’ booze-soaked celebrations (here, here) after winning the World Cup provoked some commentary. Michael Thorn, chief executive of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, noted not only the focus on alcohol-fuelled celebration by team members and by commentator and…
Honest History list: Alan Seymour
Alan Seymour, author of The One Day of the Year, has died at the age of 87, more than five decades after his play asked important questions about Australians’ attitude to Anzac Day. While a new production was playing at…
Honest History list: taking pictures
There have been a few interesting items recently on photography and things on screens so we cobbled together this list along with a few things that were on the site already. It’s the sort of thing we do at Honest…
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Brasch, Sarah: Our national cathedral? Last Post at the Memorial
Sarah Brasch ‘Our national cathedral?‘ Honest History, 15 March 2015 Describes the Last Post ceremony held almost every evening at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The author finds the ceremony ‘has a liturgy all of its own and a…
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Our national cathedral?
‘Our national cathedral?’ Honest History, 15 March 2015 Sarah Brasch* attends the Last Post ceremony at the Australian War Memorial Unlike Washington DC, Canberra does not have a National Cathedral. But since 17 April 2013 our capital has had something…
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Gregory, Mark: Australian working songs and poems
Gregory, Mark Australian Working Songs and Poems: a Rebel Heritage, Ph. D. thesis, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong, 2014 The thesis analyses 150 poems and songs about work and working conditions, with an emphasis on rights,…
Donegan, John: Australian digital montages 1914-2014
Donegan, John ‘Australian transitions 1914-2014: Digital montages from pre-war cities to a 21st century nation‘, ABC News, 29 July 2014 Montages of 1914 scenes with shots of the same locations in 2014 in seven Australian cities and nationally. Dozens of…
Piggott, Michael: storytellers for a nation?
Piggott, Michael ‘National cultural institutions: story-tellers for a nation?‘ reCollections (National Museum of Australia), 10, 1, 2015 For almost a decade now, the terms “story” and “storytelling” have been used as a marketing and branding theme by many of Australia’s…
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Robertson, Emily: Propaganda at home (Australia)
Robertson, Emily ‘Propaganda at home (Australia)‘, Ute Daniel et al., ed., 1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, 2015 Australian government propaganda was subordinate to state and federal recruiting bodies and thus was mainly tasked with maintaining…
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Dyer, Steve: Anzac Christmas at St Paul’s
Dyer, Steve ‘Anzac Christmas at St Paul’s, Melbourne‘, Honest History, 3 March 2015 A short article about two pieces of art, done almost a century apart, which combine Anzac and Christmas themes. There is also an intervention by bushfire. Steve…
Anzac Christmas at St Paul’s
Steve Dyer ‘Anzac Christmas at St Paul’s, Melbourne’, Honest History, 3 March 2015 Just before Christmas last year, in the entrance to St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in Melbourne, there sat a nativity scene by artist Jan McLellan Rizzo. It was…
McQueen, Humphrey: Australian women in the early 1980s
McQueen, Humphrey ‘The hand that pours the gin’, Gone Tomorrow: Australia in the 80s, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1982, chapter 8 (pdfs of out-of-copyright material made available by the author) The chapter uses the medium of women’s magazines to show…
Stephens, David: Why does Honest History review movies and TV shows?
Stephens, David ‘Why does Honest History review movies and TV shows?‘ Honest History, 3 March 2015 The article gives three answers to the question posed, the most important answer being that ‘film and TV portrayals of historical events stumble around…
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Why does Honest History review movies and TV shows?
David Stephens ‘Why does Honest History review movies and TV shows?’ Honest History, 3 March 2015 Regular browsers of our site will know we are offering reviews of movies and television shows that have a war theme. Last year we…
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Laugesen, Amanda: Furphies and Whizz-bangs
Laugesen, Amanda Furphies and Whizz-bangs: Anzac Slang from the Great War, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2014 Furphies and Whizz-bangs: Anzac Slang from the Great War tells the story of the First World War through an examination of the slang used…
Words in the trenches: Anzac slang reviewed
‘Words in the trenches: Anzac slang reviewed’, Honest History, 3 March 2015 Paul Daley, author and journalist with Guardian Australia, reviews Furphies and Whizz-bangs: Anzac Slang from the Great War, by Amanda Laugesen ‘Mate, I’m tellin’ yer the point blank…
Daley, Paul: Fight for Indigenous relics
Daley, Paul ‘”It taunts us spiritually”: the fight for Indigenous relics spirited off to the UK‘, Guardian Australia, 14 February 2015 Updates the battle by Indigenous Australians to return to Australia relics taken to England by collectors in the nineteenth…
Holbrook, Carolyn: Speech to History Teachers’ Summer School
Carolyn Holbrook ‘Speech to UNSW History Teachers’ Summer School, National Press Club, Canberra, 22 January 2015′, Honest History, 3 February 2015 Thank you. I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak to an audience that includes secondary school historians…
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Crombie, Kelvin: Gallipoli – The Road to Jerusalem
Crombie, Kelvin Gallipoli – The Road to Jerusalem, Koorong Books, West Ryde, NSW, 2014 The Gallipoli Campaign which began on 25 April 1915 was one of the biggest Allied defeats of World War One. Yet it stirred the imaginations and…
Hynd, Doug: Religion and the sacred after Martin Place
Hynd, Doug ‘“Religion” and “the sacred”: a note for historians following the Martin Place siege‘, Honest History, 18 January 2015 The author briefly traces the connections between religion and violence and between the secular and the sacred. He includes some…
Religion and the sacred after Martin Place
Doug Hynd ‘“Religion” and “the sacred”: a note for historians following the Martin Place siege’, Honest History, 18 January 2015 In a recent column in the Fairfax press, Crispin Hull made some comments on religion and violence in the light…
Ford, Caroline: Sydney beaches
Ford, Caroline Sydney Beaches: A History, NewSouth, Sydney, 2014 The book looks at the way Sydney’s beaches came to be as they are: how they came to be public land treasured by bathers and surfers, but not places to set…
Lord, John: Politics and Christian faith
Lord, John ‘Politics and the future of the Christian faith in Australia‘, Australian Independent Media Network, 8 December 2014 Tracks trends in religious faith and church attendance, using census and polling data. He quotes Tom Frame in his book, Losing…
Daley, Paul: My Brother Jack 50 years on
Daley, Paul ‘My Brother Jack at 50 – the novel of a man whose whole life led up to it‘, Guardian Australia, 23 December 2014 Covers the novel (first published 1964), the author, George Johnston (died of alcohol and TB…
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Horn, Jonathan: Let’s not equate players with Anzacs
Horn, Jonathan ‘Sport is brutal – but let’s not equate players with Anzacs‘, Guardian Australia, 10 September 2014 Describes how sports team ‘channel’ the Australian Digger, quoting Mick Malthouse, Steve Waugh, Alan Bond and Michael Clarke – and Ben Roberts-Smith…
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Davidson, Jim: Sport with guns
Davidson, Jim ‘Sport with guns‘, Meanjin, 67, 4, Summer 2008, pp.10-13 Suggests that Australia’s ‘celebration of the military’ has addled our consciousness, in the way that, according to Patrick White, sport had done. ‘The two things are connected. Under John…
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Cogan, James: Death of Phillip Hughes
Cogan, James ‘The death of Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes‘, World Socialist Web Site, 2 December 2014 and updated Thoughtful analysis of the national (and international) mourning said to be following the death of Hughes. Concedes his youth, likeability and talent…
Hawkings, Rebecca: Keating’s Creative Nation
Hawkings, Rebecca ‘Keating’s Creative Nation: a policy document that changed us‘, The Conversation, 30 October 2014 Article marking the 20th anniversary of Creative Nation, which injected $252 million of new spending into the arts and culture and had a profound…
Blackwood, Gemma: Resurrection of Australiana
Blackwood, Gemma ‘Pass the iced vo-vos: the resurrection of Australiana‘, The Conversation, 26 November 2014 The author notes an emerging trend in Australian popular cultural forms, involving a reinvigorated interest in Australiana – material visual culture that is visually themed…
Honest History and the deep North
Peter Sellick writes in Online Opinion mainly about Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North and what it says about how people behave during wars. Along the way, Sellick mentions Honest History’s role in presenting an alternative view…
Tan, Monica: National architecture awards
Monica Tan ‘Australia’s national architecture awards 2014 – in pictures‘, Guardian Australia, 7 November 2014 The Australian Institute of Architects has named the winners of the country’s top architectural awards. The biggest winner is Brisbane’s UQ Advanced Engineering Building by…
Schultz, Julianne, et al: What is Australia For?
Schultz, Julianne, et al ‘What is Australia For?‘ Griffith Review 36, Autumn 2012 An extensive collection tries to answer the question posed in the title. Julianne Schultz’s introduction, ‘A question with many answers‘, suggests that ‘[t]he emerging Asian century’ provides…
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They also serve
I wanted to talk about the damage war does through generations … It doesn’t stop at the people who actually fought. It affects children and the children of the children. I’m afraid the guys get excited about a war and…
Novel politics
Federation and everything it encompassed, like workers’ rights, the welfare safety net and suffrage, and not the criminal Gallipoli landings, constituted the birth of Australian nationhood. Yeah, I’ve always had a thing about 1 January 1901 and why the Founding…
Columbans: Way of Peace materials
St Columbans Mission Society The Way of Peace: Anzac Centenary Edition (1915-2015) A set of discussion and action sheets enabling Christian reflection and response during the Anzac centenary and beyond. The materials cover growing a culture of peace, power and…
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Manley, Ken R. & Barbara J. Coe: Grace of goodness
Manley, Ken R. & Barbara J. Coe The Grace of Goodness: John Saunders – Baptist Pastor and Activist, Sydney 1834-1848, Greenwood Press in association with Baptist Historical Society of NSW, Macquarie Park, NSW, 2014 Rev John Saunders (1806-59) was the…
The Grace of Goodness (Rev John Saunders) reviewed
‘The grace of goodness in early Sydney’, Honest History, 7 October 2014 Doug Hynd* reviews Ken R. Manley & Barbara J. Coe, The Grace of Goodness: John Saunders – Baptist Pastor and Activist, Sydney 1834-1848, Greenwood Press in association with…
Harris, Eleri: Utopian Canberra that wasn’t
Harris, Eleri ‘The utopian city that wasn’t: how two American architects won a competition to design Australia’s capital in 1912‘, Reform, 25 September 2014 Comicbook version of the story of Canberra from 1912 to now. Notes the impact of World…
ABC RN Bush Telegraph: Stitching the Eureka flag
ABC Radio National ‘The brave women who stitched Australia’s flag of unity and rebellion‘, Bush Telegraph, 10 September 2014 Podcast (23 minutes) discussion between Clare Wright, Val D’Angri, descendant, and Jane Smith, curator, about the history of the Eureka flag,…
ABC Radio National Media Report: News in colonial Sydney
ABC Radio National ‘News dissemination in colonial Sydney‘, Media Report, 28 August 2014 Podcast (eight minutes) in which Richard Aedy and Grace Karskens discuss dissemination by word of mouth, government notices stuck on trees, ships from Britain, communication between Indigenous…
Dowse, Sara: What are feminists to do?
Dowse, Sara ‘So what are feminists to do?‘ Inside Story, 14 August 2014 Text of 2014 Emily’s List Oration. The author was head of the federal government’s Office for the Status of Women in the 1970s. The 1970s could be…
Holbrook, Carolyn: Launch of Anzac unauthorised biography
Carolyn Holbrook ‘Launch of Anzac, the Unauthorised Biography, Carlton, Vic.’, Honest History, 15 September 2014 Carolyn Holbrook delivered this speech at the Melbourne launch of her book at Readings, Carlton, 2 September 2014. Stuart Macintyre also spoke. The book is…
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Holbrook, Carolyn: Anzac: the unauthorised biography
Holbrook, Carolyn Anzac: the Unauthorised Biography, NewSouth, Sydney, 2014 Anzac, the Unauthorised Biography … traces how, since 1915, Australia’s memory of the Great War has declined and surged, reflecting the varied and complex history of the Australian nation itself. Most…
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Anzac’s unauthorised biography reviewed
‘The unauthorised biography of a legend’, Honest History, 15 September 2014 Frank Bongiorno reviews Carolyn Holbrook, Anzac, the Unauthorised Biography, NewSouth, Sydney, 2014. See also speeches by Stuart Macintyre and the author at the Melbourne launch of the book. _________________…
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Allam, Lorena, et al: 1973 Human Relationships Royal Commission
Allam, Lorena, et al ‘Public intimacies: The Royal Commission on Human Relationships‘, ABC Radio National, 28 April 2013 ABC program (audio only) discussing the work of a ground-breaking 1970s inquiry, presented by Lorena Allam, produced by Professor Michelle Arrow and…
Goldsworthy, Anna: Voices of the land
Goldsworthy, Anna ‘Voices of the land‘, The Monthly, September 2014 updated Update 18 November 2016: Jane Simpson on some practical issues with teaching Indigenous language. Links to other material also. About the efforts of University of Adelaide, Israel-born linguist, Professor…
Lord, John: Comics in Australia
Lord, John ‘The history of comics in Australia‘, Australian Independent Media Network, 29 August 2014 Brief article covering early comic strips in The Bulletin and elsewhere, imported comics and the first Australian produced comic in 1931. They provided artists like…
Stevenson, Chrys: Politics of Australian religion
Stevenson, Chrys ‘The politics of Australian religion‘, The King’s Tribune, 25 August 2014 Examines the reasons for the bipartisan support gathered by the school chaplaincy program, despite the constitutional difficulties it has faced and doubts about its efficacy and ethics.…
Starck, Nigel: Trollope and colonials
Starck, Nigel ‘Celebrity blows: Anthony Trollope and those touchy colonials‘, The Conversation, 1 September 2014 Describes the visits to Australia of Trollope, novelist and said to be our first celebrity blow-in. He ‘found Australian pride could be easily hurt’ but we…
Laugesen, Amanda: Language, soldiers, Great War
Laugesen, Amanda ‘Language, Australian soldiers, and the First World War’, Honest History, 1 September 2014 The illustrated text of a lecture at Manning Clark House, Canberra, 21 July 2014, on the language experience of ordinary people caught up in war.…
Honest History list: wartime spin
One hundred years ago today, 1 September 1914, this item appeared in The Brisbane Courier: THE BRITISH FORCES. OFFICIAL V. OTHER REPORTS. A REASSURING STATEMENT. LONDON, Sunday Night The Government Press Bureau states that its account of the fortunes of…
Macarthur, Sally: Sculthorpe connection to land
Macarthur, Sally ‘Sculthorpe shaped composers with a connection to this land‘, The Conversation, 15 August 2014 Obituary and commentary on the late Peter Sculthorpe, composer. Sculthorpe pioneered a uniquely Australian sound. The distinctiveness of his music emerges from its connection…
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On being an independent scholar
Pamela Burton ‘On being an independent scholar’, Honest History, 25 July 2014 When Honest History asked me what it was like being an independent scholar, my first reaction was ‘lonely, sometimes frustrating, and very rewarding’. Traditionally, independent scholars are not…
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Support ineffective dissent
‘The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum …’ (Noam Chomsky, The Common Good, 2002). ‘We will tolerate dissent as long as…
Camping made us
[S]ome of our most widely held values, especially egalitarianism, tolerance and the premium we place on practicability, have been nurtured by the experience of camping. Bill Garner, author of Born in a Tent: How Camping Makes Us Australian, 2013.
Backpackers and Eureka
Eureka was a youth movement. The inhabitants of Ballarat, like the youth of a century later, believed that the times they were a’changing. And like today’s backpackers, the gold rush generation was transient, expansive, adventurous: in search of experience, questing…
Dressing – 1880s Melbourne
An English observer, Richard Twopeny, writes about female dress in 1880s Melbourne: I fancy that the French modistes manufacture a certain style of attire for the Australian market. It is a compound of the cocotte and the American. Nor when…
Media profits
[P]eople value honest, fearless, and above all independent news coverage that challenges the consensus. There is an inescapable conclusion that we must reach if we are to have a better society. The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence…
Subversive suburbs
‘So – to sum up – you don’t have to be a mindless conformist to choose suburban life. Most of the best poets and painters and inventors and protesters choose it too.’ (Hugh Stretton, Ideas for Australian Cities (1970))
Government and media – who should support whom?
The perennial question was raised again with the Prime Minister’s remarks about the ABC’s duty to support ‘Australian interests’. Previous protagonists include Abraham Lincoln, Josef Goebbels and John Curtin.
Whizzbangs what, why, when
This is to explain our section ‘Choice Whizzbangs‘. Whizzbangs first appear in our regular newsletters and we then reload most of them as Choice Whizzbangs. If you need the source for a particular Whizzbang you can usually find it by…
Many Australias
Australians have always been over-concerned about what the BBC thinks about us but this BBC man may be onto something. ‘A common failing of these kinds of columns [about national identity, often around Australia Day] is that they insist on defining a singular…
Toning it down
Mr. Howe [of Kansas] declares that Australians’ tones contradict the sentiments expressed in their words. If Australians have a fault in their speech it is that they fail to intone. Questions, answers, and boasting (which we indulge in infrequently) are usually…
Green, Jonathan: Tabloid politics
Green, Jonathan ‘The slick world of tabloid politics‘, ABC The Drum, 31 July 2014 While not explicitly making historical comparisons, the article facilitates them by presenting a contestable version of today’s politics which might be set against other analyses of…
Burton, Pamela: Independent scholars
Burton, Pamela ‘On being an independent scholar‘, Honest History, 25 July 2014 The author, a former Canberra lawyer and now author of two books (From Moree to Mabo: The Mary Gaudron Story, The Waterlow Killings: A Portrait of a Family…
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Leslie, Tim: Archibald Prize morphing
Leslie, Tim ‘The changing face of the Archibald‘, ABC News, 10 July 2014 and updated Update: 2014 Archibald Prize won by a woman (Fiona Lowry) for a portrait of a woman (Penelope Seidler). About half this year’s entrants were women…
Anzac Day Reflections
Reflections on an Anzac Day service Doug Hynd* The first Anzac Day of the millennium saw me make the substantial sacrifice of the several hours sleep required if I was to get up in time for the Dawn Service in…
Patrick, Rhianna: Indigenous authors explore new genres
Patrick, Rhianna ‘Indigenous authors explore Twitter fiction and new literary genres,’ AWAYE! ABC Radio National, 27 June 2014 Audio and text about the changes in Indigenous literature in the last 30 years, from life story and memoir in the 1980s…
Moses, John A. & Davis, George F.: Anzac Day origins
Moses, John A. & George F. Davis Anzac Day Origins: Canon DJ Garland and Trans-Tasman Commemoration, Barton Books, Barton, ACT, 2013 Examines the origins of Anzac Day via a study of Garland, who ‘became known as the “architect” of ANZAC…
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Review note: Australian war correspondents and war historians
‘Review note: Australian war correspondents and war historians’, Honest History, 20 June 2014 and updated CEW Bean, the eminent war historian, began as a war correspondent. His work is represented by selections from his diary, the Official History, and the…
Review note: Arts items miscellany
‘Review note: Arts items miscellany’, Honest History, 16 June 2014 Musician and music festival director, Chris Latham, discusses the impact of war service on composers, noting that ‘the trauma caused by the two world wars created a hiatus in the…
Sharp, Nonie: Nugget Coombs and Judith Wright
Sharp, Nonie ‘For the well-beloved: Judith Wright and Nugget Coombs‘, Meanjin, 68, 2, June 2009 Tells of the relationship between one of Australia’s greatest public servants and one of its greatest poets, drawing upon the letters they wrote to each…
Routley, Nicholas: Mahabharata
Routley, Nicholas ‘The Mahabharata: the music and drama of war’, Honest History, 12 June 2014 The Anzac centenary will have a musical element. The Anzac Centenary Advisory Board’s March 2013 report to the federal government noted the long-running work on…
Rundle, Guy: Culturestate
Rundle, Guy ‘The Culturestate’, Meanjin, 69, 2, Winter 2010, pp. 56-63 The author examines the increasing and increasingly complex relationship between the state in Australia and cultural and artistic production. By examining the history of both Australian literary production and…
Ravenscroft, Alison: Strangeness of the dance
Ravenscroft, Alison ‘The strangeness of the dance: Kate Grenville, Rohan Wilson, Inga Clendinnen and Kim Scott’, Meanjin, 72, 4, Summer 2013, pp. 64-73 The author discusses three recent Australian novels and the way that they interact very specifically with the…
Gardiner, Eric: Headless pines (war Penguins)
Gardiner, Eric ‘Headless pines‘, Meanjin, 73, 2, June 2014 Review by a Meanjin intern of the ‘War Popular Penguins‘ (Patsy Adam-Smith, The Anzacs; Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel; George Walter, The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry; Frederic Manning, The Middle Parts of…
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Clarke, Patricia: Australian propaganda in the 1950s
Clarke, Patricia ‘Bias for good or ill? Australian Government overseas propaganda in the 1950s‘, ISAA Articles The author was a journalist in the Australian News and Information Bureau (ANIB) in the 1950s, particularly writing news and features for publication in Asia.…
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Rickard, John: Sentimental blokes
Rickard, John ‘Sentimental blokes’, Meanjin, 66, 1, Autumn 2007, pp. 38-46 The author examines the homoerotic elements to the myth of Australian mateship and the way that this plays out in various literary representations, as well as in terms of…
Wetherell, Rodney: Subtopia or sunnyside?
Wetherell, Rodney ‘Subtopia or sunnyside?’, Meanjin, 65, 2, Winter 2006, pp. 174-80 The author considers representations of Melbourne in literature throughout history, focusing on AL McCann’s novel Subtopia and Sunnyside by Joanna Murray-Smith. He also reflects upon the way that…
Ball, Martin: Pro patria mori
Ball, Martin ‘Pro patria mori’, Meanjin, 63, 3, Spring 2004, pp. 3-12 Often in times of war, art and literature can become part of a number of forces that legitimate or sugar-coat warfare. In this essay, the author discusses first…
Sharp, Nonie: Three lost children
Sharp, Nonie ‘Three lost children: revisiting a heroic legend’, Meanjin, 69, 3, Spring 2010, pp. 132-41 In Australian literature and film, the figure of the ‘black tracker’ has a long and complicated history. In this essay, the author discusses the…
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Lamond, Julieanne: Women writers and literary value
Lamond, Julieanne ‘Stella vs. Miles: women writers and literary value in Australia’, Meanjin, 70, 3, Spring 2011, pp. 32-39 Literary awards, especially national ones like the Miles Franklin Award, are not just prizes that recognise quality writing; they also play…
Gaita, Raimond: Why study humanities?
Gaita, Raimond ‘Why study humanities?‘ The Conversation, 21 March 2014 Revised version of a talk to students in which Gaita talks about Indigenous Australians, Socrates, philosophy, the importance of becoming acquainted with great thinkers from the past, and the significance…
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Davidson, Jim: Biography and Australian ambiences
Davidson, Jim ‘The biography as periscope: exploring Australian ambiences‘, Meanjin, 73, 1, March 2014 Looks at how biography gives ‘glimpses of another world. A life will progress from one ambience to another, and at certain points the biographer can pause…
Broinowski, Alison: Long way from Adelaide
Broinowski, Alison ‘A long way from Adelaide’, Honest History, 30 April 2014 295 Broinowski Long way from Adelaide Alison Broinowski explores connections between some Australian expatriates in China, some exotic figures from elsewhere and private schools in Adelaide and Sydney.…
Ramsay, Juliet: Lake Burley Griffin
Ramsay, Juliet ‘Lake Burley Griffin: losing an inspired vision‘, Australian Garden History, 25, 4, 2014 To protect Lake Burley Griffin and its lakeshore parklands, the Australian Garden History Society needs to take on advocacy and conservancy by initiating a group…
Heriot, Geoff: Public broadcasting
Heriot, Geoff ‘The public interest in public broadcasting‘, Inside Story, 6 March 2014 A former ABC executive discusses the relationship between public broadcasters, governments and the public, in the light of 2014’s iteration of this perennial and noting past episodes.…
Simpson, Catherine: Turkey, Gallipoli, film, nationalism
Simpson, Catherine ‘From ruthless foe to national friend: Turkey, Gallipoli and Australian nationalism‘, Media International Australia, 137, 1, November 2010, pp. 58-66 As the centenary of the Gallipoli landings draws closer, we will no doubt be inundated with more media…
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Laugesen, Amanda: Convict words
Laugesen, Amanda Convict Words: Language in early Colonial Australia, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2002 This book explores the language of the Australian convict era, taking the form of a dictionary with supporting quotations from contemporary texts, including newspapers, government…
Laugesen, Amanda: Diggerspeak
Laugesen, Amanda Diggerspeak: the Language of Australians at War, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2005 Wars have been highly significant in the development of Australian English, generating new words and meanings. Rather than a collection of military slang or jargon,…
Laugesen, Amanda: Boredom is the enemy
Laugesen, Amanda Boredom is the Enemy: the Intellectual and Imaginative Worlds of Australian Soldiers in the Great War and Beyond, Ashgate, Farnham, UK, 2012 War is often characterised as one percent terror, 99 per cent boredom. Whilst much ink has…
Ross, Liz: The Left and gay liberation
Ross, Liz Revolution is For Us: The Left and Gay Liberation in Australia, Interventions, Brunswick, Vic., 2013 It was the Left which championed revolution, which had a theory and practice of revolution – Marxism. But when it comes to Gay…
Young, Linda: Subversive jewellery
Young, Linda ‘Subversive jewellery: challenges to conservative power from the Victorian goldfields‘, reCollections, 7, 1, 2012, pp. 1-13 This [beatifully illustrated] paper analyses a small group of pieces of gold jewellery in order to explore the digger challenge to the…
Ansara, Martha: Shadowcatchers
Ansara, Martha The Shadowcatchers: A History of Cinematography in Australia, Austcine Publishers, Artarmon, NSW, 2012 The Shadowcatchers, a comprehensive history of Australian cinematography, presents over 380 photographs of working cinematographers from 1901 to the present, with a ground-breaking, highly readable…
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Tatz, Simon: Nationalism wedge
Tatz, Simon ‘The nationalism wedge‘, Independent Australia, 3 February 2014 Argues that the Abbott Government is linking nationalism with a conservative political agenda. Quotes Benedict Anderson about nations as ‘imagined communities‘. ‘The Abbott Government’, the author claims, ‘is busy trying…
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Turnbull, Malcolm: Reinventing the news model
Turnbull, Malcolm ‘Reinventing the news model in the digital era‘, Mumbrella, 2 March 2014 Launching a new weekly newspaper, The Saturday Paper, Turnbull describes changes in the nature of mass media consequent on the development of the internet. There is…
Chynoweth, Adele: Museum sector marginalising
Chynoweth, Adele ‘Forgotten or ignored Australians? The Australian museum sector’s marginalisation of Inside – Life in Children’s Homes and Institutions‘, International Journal of the Inclusive Museum, 6, 2, pp.171-182 In 2009, the Australian Government announced as part of the National Apology to…
Schwartzkopf, Louise: Theatre for returned soldiers
Schwartzkopf, Louise ‘Theatre as a healing stage for returned soldiers‘, The Age, 25 January 2014 Afghanistan veterans act in a new play that relives some of their experiences and also has therapeutic benefits. The Long Way Home, a play by…
Maley, Jacqueline: Debate about Australia Day
Maley, Jacqueline ‘Needless debate masks true meaning of Australia Day‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 January 2014 On Australia Day, we should, by all means, celebrate our good fortune, the hiccup of fate that means we get to live in Australia…
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Grant, Corinne: Straya stayin dumb
Grant, Corinne ‘I’m strayan and I love stayin’ dumb‘, The Hoopla, 23 January 2014 Stand-up comic and writer critical at Australia Day of Australians’ alleged liking for trivia: ‘We want short slogans, simple solutions and lots and lots of drama’.…
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Daley, Paul: Anzac, the Australian flag, and Cronulla race riots
On the anniversary of the Cronulla riots between flag-draped anglo-australian and Lebanese youths, Paul Daley writes in the The Guardian online questioning the appropriation of the Australian flag and the Southern Cross motif, as well as the politicisation of race divisions…
Hynd, Doug: Anzac Day reflections
Hynd, Doug ‘Reflections on an Anzac Day service’, Honest History, 4 December 2013 The author probes the theology of an Anzac Day Dawn Service and asks how compatible are the claims embodied in the liturgy of the Dawn Service and…
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Paul Daley gets to the heart of Honest History
Author and journalist Paul Daley caught the spirit of Honest History and brought in a range of personal reflections from his work as a historical writer, during his talk as guest speaker at the formal launch of the Honest History…
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McCalman, Iain: Barrier reef
McCalman, Iain The Reef: A Passionate History, Viking, Melbourne, 2013 This is a social, cultural and environmental history. The Great Barrier Reef, argues Iain McCalman, has been created by human minds as well as coral polyps, by imaginations as well…
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Scott, Rosie & Tom Keneally, ed.: Country too far
Scott, Rosie & Tom Keneally, ed. A Country Too Far: Writings on Asylum Seekers, Viking, Melbourne, 2013 Short stories, book extracts, poems and essays on aspects of Australia’s current attitudes to asylum seekers, in some contributions set against the historical…
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Crowther, Philip & Lindy Osborne: Architecture
Crowther, Philip & Lindy Osborne ‘Building a nation: the state of play in Australian architecture‘, The Conversation, 1 November 2013 Brief historical survey, leading to the point where Australia now has seven of the 100 largest architectural practices in the…
White, Richard: Inventing Australia
White, Richard Inventing Australia: Images and Identity, 1688-1980, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 1981 Pioneering work in Australian cultural history, roughly chronological but also thematic. “To be Australian”: what can that mean? Inventing Australia sets out to find the…
White, Richard et al: On holidays
White, Richard with Sarah-Jane Ballard, Ingrid Bown, Meredith Lake, Patricia Leehy and Lila Oldmeadow On Holidays: A History of Getting Away in Australia, Pluto Press, North Melbourne, Vic., 2005 Describes chronologically from 1768 ‘the Australian experience of going on holidays…
Nethercote, JR, ed.: Liberalism and federation
Nethercote, JR, ed. Liberalism and the Australian Federation, Federation Press, Annandale, NSW, 2001 ‘Recounts the story of Australia’s nationhood as the story of Australian Liberalism. This is the first book put together by the Liberal Party of Australia for many…
Hamilton, Andrew: Anzac Day celebrates humanity
Hamilton, Andrew ‘Anzac Day celebrates humanity, not nationalism‘, Eureka Street, 17, 7, 16 April 2007 Extended discussion of the religious aspects of Anzac Day, including whether it qualifies as a secular religion. (The author suggests ‘that in the Christian tradition,…
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Given, Jock: Turning off the television
Given, Jock Turning Off the Television: Broadcasting’s Uncertain Future, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2003 Writing at the beginning of the digital age, the author addresses a range of issues arising from the move from analog to digital broadcasting. He takes a…
Throsby, Margaret & Richard Cashman: History of sport
Throsby, Margaret & Richard Cashman ‘Richard Cashman on the history of sport in Australia‘, ABC Classic FM, 14 February 2013 Audio and accompanying biodata of talk with Australia’s leading sports historian
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ASSH multiple authors: Australian Society for Sports History
ASSH multiple authors Australian Society for Sports History (website) Links to publications and other resources.
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Henry, Nicola & Karolina Kurzak: Religion in Australia
Henry, Nicola & Karolina Kurzak with Charles Sherlock ‘Religion in Australia‘, The Australian Collaboration: A Collaboration of National Community Organisations (October 2012) Factsheet on religious affiliations (including Australian Bureau of Statistics figures summarised), interfaith developments and the place of religion…
McMullin, Ross: Will Dyson
McMullin, Ross Will Dyson: Australia’s Radical Genius, Scribe, Carlton North, Vic., 2006; revised edition 2006 Biography of a war cartoonist, war artist and artist There is a review here, another one here (quoted below) and the author talks about his…
Waterhouse, Richard: Private pleasures
Waterhouse, Richard Private Pleasures, Public Leisure: A History of Australian Popular Culture since 1788, Longman Australia, South Melbourne, Vic., 1995 How do we define culture? And how do we specify popular culture? Private Pleasures, Public Leisure, the first general history…
Irving, Terence H & Sean Scalmer: Labour intellectuals
Irving, Terence H & Sean Scalmer ‘Labour intellectuals in Australia: modes, traditions, generations, transformations‘, International Review of Social History, 50, 1, 2005, pp. 1-26 The labour movement has been replete with educators, readers, advocates, stirrers, brokers, editors, writers, painters, theorists,…
Winter, Brendan: Film.org.au
Winter, Brendan Film.org.au: The Best in Australian Film Private website, perhaps slightly out-of-date, but offering list of and information about Australian films since 1900, a history and notes on actors and directors. Described as ‘a website to inspire people about…
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National Film and Sound Archive: Film Australia collection
National Film and Sound Archive Film Australia Collection ‘The NFSA is the proud custodian of the Film Australia Collection (FAC), preserving and providing access to the nation’s documentary record – our collective memory.’ (blurb) Among other things, enables searching of…
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Australia: Film in Australia
Australia Film in Australia Portal site with brief history and many links to relevant sites and material.
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Australian Screen multiple authors: Australian screen: historical
Australian Screen multiple authors Australian Screen: Historical Collection of video and audio clips dating back to c. 1900, including rare footage of troops embarking for overseas, at Gallipoli, in France and returning home in 1918.
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Australian Screen multiple authors: Australian screen: film and television
Australian Screen multiple authors Australian Screen: History of Australian Film and Television Dozens of clips from Australian productions with teacher’s notes for some.
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Wilde, William H, Joy Hooton & Barry Andrews: Australian literature
Wilde, William H, Joy Hooton & Barry Andrews, ed. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2nd edition, 1994 The book (833 pp.) ‘offers a comprehensive record of Australian writing from European settlement to the early 1990s…
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Serle, Geoffrey: From deserts the prophets come
Serle, Geoffrey From Deserts the Prophets Come: The Creative Spirit in Australia 1788-1972, Heinemann, Mebourne, 1973; online version available; new edition 2013 From Deserts the Prophets Come is a short history of literature, art, music, theatre, architecture, science and learning…
Australian Screen multiple authors: Australian screen: all music
Australian Screen multiple authors ‘All music‘, Australian Screen Online audio archive.
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National Library multiple authors: Australian music
National Library multiple authors ‘Australian music in Trove: Music Australia‘, National Library of Australia Leads into the Libary’s music holdings.
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AllDownUnder multiple authors: Australian songs
AllDownUnder multiple authors ‘Australian songs‘, AllDownUnder.com Contains lyrics, audio and video of 100 Australian songs that ‘have captured our history’.
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Inglis, KS: Whose ABC?
Inglis, KS Whose ABC? The Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1983–2006, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2006; e-book available Takes the story of the national broadcaster into the 21st century, interweaving institutional, cultural and political history. The author talks about the book here and…
Inglis, KS: This is the ABC
Inglis, KS This is the ABC: The Australian Broadcasting Commission 1932-1983, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2nd edition, 2006; first published Melbourne University Press, 1983 The development of the ABC parallels that of Australia over these years. ‘Inglis shows us the ABC’s…
Australia: Australian dance
Australia Australian Dance Portal site with brief history and many links to relevant sites and material.
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Ennis, Helen: Photography and Australia
Ennis, Helen Photography and Australia, Reaktion Books, London, 2007 A leading Australian photography historian, Ennis argues that the colonial experience is a central element of these visual testaments, and embedded within this experience are the tumultuous relations between white settlers…
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Davies, Alan: Eye for photography
Davies, Alan An Eye for Photography: The Camera in Australia, Miegunyah Press & State Library of New South Wales, Carlton, Vic., & Sydney, 2004 The book ‘traces the development of photography in Australia from the earliest daguerreotypes to digital imagery…
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Australian Music History multiple authors: Australian music history
Australian Music History multiple authors Australian Music History A compendium popular music website with news items and comprehensive listings of bands, musicians and related information.
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National Gallery multiple authors: National Gallery of Australia: Australian Art
National Gallery multiple authors National Gallery of Australia: Australian Art Comprehensive website introducing the NGA’s collection of Australian art, including notes on new acquisitions, articles on particular features of the collection, an extensive archive of information about past exhibitions, a…
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Anderson, Jaynie, ed.; Australian art historiography
Anderson, Jaynie, ed. ‘Australian art historiography‘, Journal of Art Historiography, 4, June 2011 (special issue) Articles on the canon, Aboriginal art, Australian and New Zealand art, curators and curating, Bernard Smith, Daryl Lindsay, Ursula Hoff, Joseph Burke, photography and other…
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Bannerman, Colin: Australian food history
Bannerman, Colin ‘Making Australian food history‘, Australian Humanities Review, 51, 2011 The importance that food and eating have assumed as components of popular culture in Australia has not yet been matched by thorough historical analysis. This essay briefly surveys existing…
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Warhurst, John: Religion in politics
Warhurst, John ‘Religion in 21st century Australian national politics’, Australia. Senate: Papers on Parliament, 46, December 2006 The religious factor generally means a number of things in politics. One is the political activity of the organised face of religion, the…
Garner, Bill: Born in a tent
Garner, Bill Born in a Tent: How Camping Makes Us Australian, New South, Sydney, 2013 The sub-title emphasises the multifarious influences on Australia and Australians. The author shows that the history of Australia can be told through a history of…
Davison, Graeme: Car wars
Graeme Davison with Sheryl Yelland Car Wars: How the Car Won Our Hearts and Conquered Our Cities, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2004 War snuffs out lives and begets dreams. For servicemen and civilians alike, World War II was…
Costantino, Emma & Sian Supski, ed.: Culinary distinction
Costantino, Emma & Sian Supski, ed. ‘Culinary distinction‘, Journal of Australian Studies, 30, 87, 2006 (special issue) Articles on Indigenous cookery (Laurel Dyson, Colin Bannerman), Australian cuisine in the 19th and 20th centuries (Barbara Santich), Anzac biscuits (Supski), Scocth ovens…
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About Expressing ourselves
Click here for all items related to: Expressing ourselves Here there are references covering a wide field associated with the expression of talents or preferences. In most cases, the authors attempt to draw some connections between the particular strand that…
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Altman, Dennis: End of the homosexual
Altman, Dennis The End of the Homosexual, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 2013 The book ‘connects what has happened within the changing queer world over the past forty years to larger social, political and cultural trends. This is…
Bongiorno, Frank: Sex
Bongiorno, Frank The Sex Lives of Australians, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2012 ‘Cross-dressing colonists, effeminate bushrangers and women-shortage woes – here is the first ever history of sex in Australia, from Botany Bay to the present-day. ‘ The book shows how…
Featherstone, Lisa: Sex
Featherstone, Lisa Let’s Talk about Sex: Histories of Sexuality in Australia from Federation to the Pill, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, 2011 Covering the period to 1961, the book ‘explores the ways sexuality has been constructed, understood and experienced in…
Rolls, Eric: Visions of Australia
Rolls, Eric Visions of Australia: Impressions of the Landscape, 1642-1910, Lothian, South Melbourne, Vic., 2002. braille edition, 2005 This book remakes the conception of Australia. Writers such as Henry Lawson saw Australia through the eyes of settlers trying to build…
McKernan, Michael: Churches and the Great War
McKernan, Michael Australian Churches at War: Attitudes and Activities of the Major Churches, 1914-1918, Catholic Theological Faculty & Australian War Memorial, Sydney & Canberra, 1980 Based on the author’s thesis. The author discusses here (2004) the role of the churches,…
Gerster, Robin: Big-noting
Gerster, Robin Big-noting: the Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1987; reprint with different pagination 1992 The author is critical of CEW Bean and many others, writers of both fiction and non-fiction from World War…
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Whimpress, Bernard: Creeping Anzacism
Bernard Whimpress* ‘Creeping Anzacism: a paper delivered to the 15th State History Conference, Adelaide, 28 May 2006‘ Bernard Whimpress is an Adelaide-based historian best known as a sports writer. However, he has also written books and articles on city heritage,…
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Daley, Paul: Peace not war
Daley, Paul ‘A contest about peace not war‘, Canberra Times, 21 April 2013 Contrasts the Anzac Day AFL match with an Anzac Day parade in a small town. My view has always been that Anzac commemoration, while largely a communal…
Rowse, Tim: Liberalism
Rowse, Tim Australian Liberalism and National Character, Kibble Books, Melbourne, 1978 Exploration of the development of liberalism as Australia’s dominant ideology, from the early 2oth century to the 1970s. Among other things, quotes (p. 177) CEW Bean in 1943 on…
Elias, Ann: Max Dupain and camouflage
Elias, Ann ‘Hidden history: Max Dupain, modernism and war time camouflage‘, The Conversation, 26 July 2013 Intersection between the arts (photography) and war (camouflage techniques). Describes how artists ‘used the techniques of abstraction, cubism and surrealism to help the military…
Stanley, Peter: Bad Characters
Peter Stanley Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny and Murder and the Australian Imperial Force, Murdoch/Pier 9, Sydney 2010 Australia’s long-standing love affair with the Diggers has blinded us to the dark side of the Anzac legend. Bad Characters is a…
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O’Neill, Sharon & Alan Seymour: One Day of the Year 2003
O’Neill, Sharon & Alan Seymour ‘The one day of the year‘, ABC Stateline NSW, 25 April 2003 (transcript) The revival of the 1960 play occasions a look at changing attitudes towards Anzac. Reporter Sharon O’Neill interviews author Alan Seymour.
Hillman, Roger: A transnational Gallipoli?
Roger Hillman ‘A transnational Gallipoli?‘ Australian Humanities Review, 51, November 2011, pp. 25-42 (free download) ‘Changing perceptions of Gallipoli’, the author argues, ‘are an instructive case study in a world of increasingly transnational perspectives’. (p. 25) Considers the views of…
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Palmer, Vance: The Legend of the Nineties
Vance Palmer The Legend of the Nineties, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1963; first published 1954; later editions Classic study of the contribution of the culture of the 1890s to the formation of an Australian national identity.
Rosenwater, Irving: Sir Donald Bradman
Irving Rosenwater Sir Donald Bradman: A Biography, Batsford, London, 1978 One of many biographies and ephemera on Bradman, once described by an Australian Prime Minister as ‘the greatest living Australian’. From a historian’s point of view, the most interesting aspect…
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Henderson, Gerard: Mr Santamaria and the Bishops
Gerard Henderson Mr Santamaria and the Bishops, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, second revised edition, 1983; first published Studies in the Christian Movement 1982 The Labor Split of the 1950s and the proper role of religion in politics. The author had…
Broadbent, Harvey: A simple epic: Gallipoli and the Australian media
Harvey Broadbent ‘A simple epic’: Gallipoli and the Australian media (The 2009 Lone Pine Anniversary Lecture) Media includes newspapers, radio and television, internet, cinema, theatre and books. The article covers the whole period 1915-2009. ‘Media … was involved from the…
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Chynoweth, Adele: Politics in our museums
Adele Chynoweth ‘The history wars are over, now it’s time to get politics back in our museums’, The Conversation, 6 March 2013 Australia’s museums should ‘take heart and more importantly show courage to tell the truth, the whole truth, and…
Altman, Dennis: Defying Gravity
Altman, Dennis Defying Gravity: A Political Life, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1997; Australian Public Intellectuals Network, Perth, 2004 Altman has been a gay activist and writer for more than four decades.
Altman, Dennis: From a drowning to a celebration
Dennis Altman ‘From a drowning to a celebration’, Inside Story, 11 December 2012 Edited version of a Dunstan Lecture, describing forty years of gender politics in Australia.
Arrow, Michelle: Friday on Our Minds
Michelle Arrow Friday on Our Minds: Popular Culture in Australia since 1945, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2009 Looks at popular culture since World War II through the lenses of consumerism, the impact of technological change and the…
Bongiorno, Frank et al, ed.: Mars and Minerva
Frank Bongiorno, Iain Spence & John Moses, ed. ‘Mars and Minerva: Australian intellectuals and the Great War’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 53, 3, September 2007 (special edition) Covers the fields of science and technology, literature and literary criticism,…