AustLit

'Memorials to Australian participation in wars abound in our landscape. From Melbourne's huge Shrine of Remembrance to the modest marble soldier, obelisk or memorial hall in suburb and country town, they mourn and honour Australians who have served and died for their country. Surprisingly, they have largely escaped scrutiny. Ken Inglis argues that the imagery, rituals and rhetoric generated around memorials constitute a civil religion, a cult of ANZAC. Sacred Places traces three elements which converged to create the cult: the special place of war in the European mind when nationalism was at its zenith; the colonial condition; and the death of so many young men in distant battle, which impelled the bereaved to make substitutes for the graves of which history had deprived them. The 'war memorial movement' attracted conflict as well as commitment. Inglis looks at uneasy acceptance, even rejection, of the cult by socialists, pacifists, feminists and some Christians, and at its virtual exclusion of Aborigines. He suggests that between 1918 and 1939 the making, dedication and use of memorials enhanced the power of the right in Australian public life. Finally, he examines a paradox. Why, as Australia's wars recede in public and private memory, and as a once British Australia becomes multicultural, have the memorials and what they stand for become more cherished than ever? Sacred Places spans war, religion, politics, language and the visual arts. Ken Inglis has distilled new cultural understandings from a familiar landscape.' (Publication summary)

'As the bells in the tower of Sydney's General Post Office chimed eight o'clock on the evening of Friday 1 July 1932, the peals were picked up by a microphone and carried to every State of the Federation. 'This is the Australian Broadcasting Commission,' said the announcer, Conrad Charlton.

'So begins K.S. Inglis's compelling history of the first fifty years of the ABC. In a sparkling tour de force Inglis shows us the ABC's triumphs and failures, its great medley of personalities and the effects it has had on Australian public life. Based on the Commission's own archives, on newspapers and journals, on a rich assortment of interviews and on the author's own listening and viewing, this is a social history of the highest order.' (Publication summary)