Stumbling Through the Past

The past is not perfect

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Book Reviews

Review: The Anzacs by Patsy Adam-Smith

Patsy Adam-Smith’s book, The Anzacs, helped to revive the Gallipoli myth when it was first published in 1978. Selling over 100,000 copies at a time when Australia’s population was 14 million, it showed that Australians were interested in reading war histories despite revulsion at war in the aftermath of the conflict in Vietnam.

Nearly forty years after it was first published I review this book from a twenty-first century perspective.

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Vale Jill Roe

Australian historian, Jill Roe passed away late last week. Jill Roe has been a leading Australian historian for several decades. She is best known for her biography of literary great, Miles Franklin, but she also did many years work for the Australian Dictionary of Biography. In this post I highlight some of her work and a fascinating interview of her. The photo of her that I use in this post is courtesy of the only time I met her in person. It is a vignette that I think reveals a lovely personality.

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Education

Queensland’s Bible in State Schools Referendum – 1910

My honours thesis, Queensland’s Bible in State Schools Referendum 1910: A Case Study of Democracy, is now available to download from the University of Sydney eScholarship Repository. I found a fascinating era of Queensland’s history where women, Labour politicians and the Protestant clergymen of the Bible in State Schools League grappled with the issue of whether Bible lessons should be reintroduced in Queensland’s state schools. In this post I share some of my research experiences and the reasons why I enjoyed researching this history.

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