'A new and radically different biography of the Australian-born archaeologist and prehistorian, Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957). In his early life he was active in the Australian labour movement and wrote How Labour Governs (1923), the world’s first study of parliamentary socialism. At the end of the First World War he decided to pursue a life of scholarship to 'escape the fatal lure’ of politics and Australian labour’s ‘politicalism’, his term for its misguided emphasis on parliamentary representation.
'In Britain, with the publication of The Dawn of European Civilisation (1925) he began a career that would establish him as preeminent in his field and one of the most distinguished scholars of the mid-twentieth century. At the same time, his aim was to ‘democratise archaeology’, to involve people in its practice and to reveal to them What Happened in History (1942), the title of his most popular book. It sold 300,00 copies in its first 15 years.
'Politics continued to lure him, and for forty years the security services of Britain and Australia continued to spy on him. He supported Russia’s ‘grand and hopeful experiment’ and opposed the rise of fascism. His Australian background reinforced his hatred of colonialism and imperialism. Politics was also implicated in his death. There is a direct line between Childe's early radicalism and his final - and fatal - political act in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. This is a book about the central place of socialist politics in his life, and his contribution to the theory of history that this politics entailed.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Vere Gordon Childe remains, after a century, Australia’s greatest archaeological expatriate. During the interwar period and into the 1960s he played a seminal role in crafting a coherent pan-European narrative of prehistoric cultural change from what had largely been several centuries of localised antiquarian object collecting. He not only connected local manifestations of archaeological evidence into cultural units that extended beyond national boundaries but was able to arrange them in time, providing a structure in which cultural successions and ethnic change could be examined as forming the evolving human map of Europe and the Middle East that emerged with the earliest historical records.' (Introduction)
'A radical polymath himself, Jack Lindsay recalled Vere Gordon Childe as ‘a bubble-pricker’ yet retained an affectionate regard for this deeply enigmatic man. ‘He was the most detached person I knew’, Lindsay continued, ‘and yet one felt all the while there was a warm core to his gently spoken and deadly sarcasm’ (124). Terry Irving’s biography, similarly, gently works its way around Childe, a figure who demands a measure of introspection as well as a breadth of scholarly investment from those seeking to understand and ‘place’ him.' (Introduction)
'Terry Irving charts the politics of early twentieth century Australia through the life of writer and polymath Vere Gordon Childe.'
'Terry Irving charts the politics of early twentieth century Australia through the life of writer and polymath Vere Gordon Childe.'
'A radical polymath himself, Jack Lindsay recalled Vere Gordon Childe as ‘a bubble-pricker’ yet retained an affectionate regard for this deeply enigmatic man. ‘He was the most detached person I knew’, Lindsay continued, ‘and yet one felt all the while there was a warm core to his gently spoken and deadly sarcasm’ (124). Terry Irving’s biography, similarly, gently works its way around Childe, a figure who demands a measure of introspection as well as a breadth of scholarly investment from those seeking to understand and ‘place’ him.' (Introduction)
'Vere Gordon Childe remains, after a century, Australia’s greatest archaeological expatriate. During the interwar period and into the 1960s he played a seminal role in crafting a coherent pan-European narrative of prehistoric cultural change from what had largely been several centuries of localised antiquarian object collecting. He not only connected local manifestations of archaeological evidence into cultural units that extended beyond national boundaries but was able to arrange them in time, providing a structure in which cultural successions and ethnic change could be examined as forming the evolving human map of Europe and the Middle East that emerged with the earliest historical records.' (Introduction)
