AustLit

(Introduction)

'The National Archives of Australia has already been busy telling its own story of what happened in the Palace Letters affair. Visitors to an exhibit at its Canberra East Block headquarters will learn that ‘[o]n 14 July 2020 that the National Archives of Australia released, without exemption, a collection of papers known as the “Palace Letters”’. More cryptically, it then refers to ‘a series of court challenges and appeals’.'  (Introduction)

'In the frantic days after the recent US presidential election, Donald Trump’s team – led by his attorney Rudy Giuliani – held a media conference in a suburban Philadelphia carpark. The establishment that formed the backdrop to this unusual performance is called Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Neighbouring businesses included a crematorium and an adult entertainment store (soon translated on social media into a ‘dildo shop’). At the time of writing, the explanation for how this had happened is still not forthcoming, but most commentators assumed a mix-up with one of the city’s major hotels, also called Four Seasons.' (Introduction)

'Geoffrey Blainey and his lawyers have shown a close interest in this book. Author Richard Allsop has little to say about the bumpy journey to publication, recording cryptically that Blainey gave early encouragement and assistance to the project – originally a Monash University doctoral thesis – and then that he withdrew support. But although Allsop does not mention this himself, it is on the public record that an earlier plan to publish had to be abandoned after a threat of legal action from Blainey's lawyer (The Australian, 29–30 October 2016).' (Introduction)

'William McMahon has not quite been the white whale of Australian political biography. Nevertheless, until this fine book by Patrick Mullins, he was virtually alone among Australian prime ministers in not having attracted a serious study. One problem has been lack of access to McMahon's papers, held at the National Library of Australia. But this book is so rich in detail, so penetrating in its insights, and so impressive in its research, that it is hard to imagine anyone with such access bettering Mullins.' (Introduction)

'If Bob Hawke had never become prime minister, he would still be recalled as a major figure in Australian political and industrial history. As president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), Hawke was as instantly recognisable as any pop star. But it is as prime minister of Australia (1983-1991) that he made his greatest mark.' (Introduction)

'A literary criticism of the book "Tracker Tilmouth: The Vision Splendid" by Alexis Wright is presented. It explores Tilmouth's political view on Australian Prime Minister John Howard's government as well as concerns and issues linking the Labor Party. It also provides an overview of Tilmouth, who belonged to the generation of Aboriginal leaders in the country.' (Publication abstract)

'The connected radical lives of Tom Mann and Bob Ross allow the British labour biographer-historian, Neville Kirk, to take his readers on a tour of many of the countries of settler empire, and occasionally beyond it. Mann was a much-admired and much-travelled British labour leader who lived for much of the first decade of the twentieth century in Australia and New Zealand, playing a formative role in political and industrial mobilisation and organisation. The Australian-born Ross was less peripatetic, moving between paid gigs, usually in radical journalism, in Brisbane, Melbourne, Broken Hill and New Zealand.'  (Introduction)

'Remembering a historian of fierce independence and unusual originality.'