Tag Archives: Biography

War, Business and Orchids – the Smith Story

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We did it! I was part of an international research project that has led to the publication of this book. No Substitute for Kindness: The Story of May and Stanley Smith (May and Stanley Smith Charitable Trust, 2017).

Stanley Smith was an Australian businessman, WWII operative in China and expert horticulturalist. His life took him from a comfortable Brisbane upbringing to the danger of war and finally to a life half-way across the world. His Chinese-born wife, May Wong, grew up during the civil war in China and the fighting against Japanese occupation. May and Stanley met through their work for British propaganda and intelligence in the Chinese wartime capital of the city then known as Chungking (Chongqing).

Together the lives of Stanley and May Smith make a gripping read in the newly published book, No Substitute for Kindness. Commissioned by one of the philanthropic funds established by the couple, a team of researchers and writers from the United States, England and Australia have pieced together a fascinating biography.

I was one of the historians who worked on the book. My principal task was to research the early years of Stanley Smith’s life. He was born in Brisbane in 1907 and was a student at Eagle Junction State School. Stanley then won a state scholarship to the Church of England Grammar School or ‘Churchie’ as it is commonly known. Continue reading →

Review: The Riddle of Father Hackett by Brenda Niall

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The Riddle of Father Hackett: A Life in Ireland and Australia by Brenda Niall (NLA Publishing: 2009)

The Riddle of Father Hackett: A Life in Ireland and Australia by Brenda Niall (NLA Publishing: 2009)

Brenda Niall’s biography of Irish-Australian Jesuit priest, Father Hackett, is absorbing from the start. Niall starts by sharing her musings as she walks through Kew cemetery in Melbourne where Father Hackett is buried. She shares some memories of the cleric who often visited her home when she was a child and her thoughts as she sifts through that third cemetery in which the lives of a chosen few are interred – the archive. Father Hackett springs out from the pages as a vibrant, warm person but with deep sorrows in his heart. The Riddle of Father Hackett lies in Ireland in the sad and violent early twentieth century.

Like Melbourne’s Archbishop Mannix, Father Hackett lived a significant part of his life in Ireland, arriving in Australia when he was in his early forties, but he was far more enmeshed in the dangerous politics of Ireland than the senior cleric. The first third of The Riddle of Father Hackett is an engrossing introduction to early twentieth-century Irish politics. As a priest Father Hackett was close to men of the Easter Uprising and the civil war of the early 1920s such as Robert Barton, Eamon de Valera, Padraig Pearse, Robert Barton and Erskine Childers. He used his influence to shine light on Ireland’s plight by inviting English Quakers and Americans to tour the scenes of atrocities. His clerical garb protected him from unwanted British attention. Then in the midst of this dark turmoil Father Hackett was sent by the Jesuits to Australia. Continue reading →

Reading in 2013: some reflections

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Logo for Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012

I’ve used the 2012 logo throughout 2013, so why not use it one more time?

During 2013 I participated in the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge. This Challenge encourages people to read and review books written by Australian women. It is a response to the lack of attention women writers receive from major reviewing publications both in Australia and elsewhere in the western world.

I like the fact that instead of whinging about yet another example of how women tend to suffer second-rate treatment, we can do something positive to bring attention to the extent and quality of women’s writing through this Challenge.

This year I challenged myself to the Franklin level – reading ten books by Australian women and reviewing six. These are the books I reviewed in 2013: Continue reading →

Books at the Australian Historical Association Conference 2013

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DSCN9757 Promos Books CThis week I’m blogging and tweeting from Wollongong. It is the annual festival of history also known as the Australian Historical Association conference or #OzHA2013 on Twitter. Historians from Australia, New Zealand and further afield have gathered here to share and discuss their exciting work.

I came to the conference on the search for new books to share with the participants of the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge.  For the last six months I have been a volunteer for the Challenge, looking after histories, biographies and memoirs.  I want to raise awareness of all the great books in these genres that are available.

Yesterday the Challenge revealed that over one thousand reviews have been written and over five hundred authors have had their work reviewed online in the first six months of this year. These figures are impressive but how did histories, biographies and memoirs fare? Continue reading →

Kitty’s War by Janet Butler

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Kitty's War by Janet Butler, (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2013).

Kitty’s War by Janet Butler, (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2013).

This is the kind of history I want to read.  Thorough research, deep analysis and compelling writing, Kitty’s War by Janet Butler engaged me from cover to cover.

In Kitty’s War author, Janet Butler, does not merely recount what she has learned from the diary of World War I nurse, Kit McNaughton, she interrogates McNaughton’s diary, draws heavily on a myriad of contemporary historical resources and produces a searching analysis of war, gender and the nature of diary writing while maintaining an engrossing narrative.

Kit McNaughton served with the Australian Army Nursing Service from 1915 for the duration of the war.  Initially stationed in Egypt, she served on the island of Lemnos treating men injured men at Gallipoli.  After the withdrawal from Gallipoli she was transferred to northern France where she served in a number of hospitals in northern France treating enormous numbers of soldiers injured in the horrific battles on the Western Front.

Looking back through my notes in my reading journal I see that I have repeatedly used the word ‘perceptive’.  Butler does not take the diary at face value and the book is all the better for it.  The chapters about Butler’s service on the island of Lemnos treating soldiers injured at Gallipoli would have been bland if Butler had not dug deeper.  Butler is sensitive to the cultural constraints under which the nurses worked.  The ideals of a ‘good nurse’ required nurses to be stoic in the face of difficulty, ministering angels only thinking of the needs of the patient and not of their own.  McNaughton reflects these ideals in her diary hence she makes little mention of the awful conditions under which she is working.   Drawing on other sources Butler allows the reader to understand the context in which McNaughton’s diary is written. Continue reading →