y separately published work icon History Australia periodical issue   peer reviewed assertion
Issue Details: First known date: 2023... vol. 20 no. 3 2023 of History Australia est. 2003- History Australia
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Contents

* Contents derived from the , 2023 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Robert Menzies’ Forgotten People and the Meaning of 1992, Sybil Nolan , single work criticism

'This article investigates the reception of Judith Brett’s landmark study, Robert Menzies’ Forgotten People, on its publication in 1992, a moment when many Australians living under neoliberal economic reform and recession were rethinking what it meant to be middle class. Brett argued that Menzies thought it meant individuals living the best lives they could, lives defined by independence and the possession of superior moral qualities. Her account resonated with contemporary Australian experience and remains highly influential. Yet within political history, reviews were mixed as traditionalists resisted the psychoanalytic theory Brett employed to understand Menzies’ public language. Her strategic defence of her interdisciplinary approach has ultimately helped to keep the idea of moral liberalism alive in political discourse.'  (Publication abstract)

(p. 417-434)
Landmark Histories : Response by Judith Brett, Judith Brett , single work criticism

'It is very gratifying to have Robert Menzies’ Forgotten People included in History Australia’s Landmarks series, and I thank the editors for the honour and Sybil Nolan for her thoughtful discussion of the book and its reception. I thank her too for publishing a second edition in 2007 with Melbourne University Press which has kept the book in print. I wrote a long introduction to this second edition, in which I reflected on the book’s origins in a course I was teaching on political parties at the University of Melbourne in 1980. Back then, I was looking for readings on the Liberal Party – its history, what it stood for and the reasons for its electoral success. Everything I found was from the left, describing the party as a vehicle for capital and the ruling class. I wanted something from inside, which captured the party’s self-understandings, when I found a copy of Menzies’ 1942 radio broadcast, ‘The Forgotten People’, in the basement of the Baillieu Library. I had just finished my PhD on the fin-de-siècle Austrian writer, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which used a close reading of Hofmannsthal’s writing to develop a psycho-biographical argument about his transition from a gifted young lyric poet to Richard Strauss’s librettist. I was good at close reading, and I started to apply my skill to Menzies’ broadcast, mostly to the ‘Forgotten People’ broadcast itself but also to other of his writing, including his occasional verse.'  (Publication abstract)

(p. 435-437)
Anna Clark Explores How Australian History Has Been Made and Why It Matters, Nancy Cushing , single work review
— Review of Making Australian History Anna Clark , 2022 multi chapter work criticism ;

'The intention of this book is clearly stated on the first page, immediately following the acknowledgement of Country. Anna Clark sets out to document the role of the capital ‘H’ History discipline – that taught in schools and universities, with its formal qualifications and professional bodies – in the colonisation of Australia. She also seeks to identify other forms of history-making that have told the story of the continent and its people over millennia and to explore ways in which historical reconciliation could occur as part of wider processes of individual and collective healing.' (Introduction)   

(p. 454-455)
Alan Atkinson Writes about Two of the Best-known and Consequential Figures of Early Colonial Australia, Ian Hoskins , single work review
— Review of Elizabeth and John : The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm Alan Atkinson , 2022 single work biography ;

'John Macarthur has been a polarising figure in Australian history since HV Evatt’s rehabilitation of his adversary, William Bligh first appeared in 1937. Evatt cast Macarthur as a defender of landed wealth; brilliant but without ‘scruple or ‘pity’ (1944, Rum Rebellion, 197). MH Ellis countered this revisionism in his sympathetic 1955 biography of Macarthur. John’s longstanding place as nation-builder was reinforced with Gordon Andrews’ 1966 design of the new colourful two-dollar note featuring a handsome Macarthur and an equally impressive merino ram; a brilliantly distilled history lesson for Australians for 20 years. Decades later he was a ‘colonial bully’.' (Introduction)   

(p. 456-457)
Chris Wallace on Biography as an Instrument of Image Making in National Politics; and Ross Walker’s Life Story of Harold Holt, Paul Strangio , single work review
— Review of Political Lives : Australian Prime Ministers and Their Biographers Christine Wallace , 2022 single work biography ;

'Chris Wallace has written an engrossing and original study about the role of biography in image making in Australian national politics. In a story now well circulated, Wallace landed on the topic after spiking her biography of Julia Gillard because of an apprehension that the prime minister’s numerous enemies, both within and outside her government, would ‘cherrypick’ (xi) the book for ammunition to hurl at Gillard. From this, Wallace was spurred to ask questions about the practice of contemporary political biography—those published while leaders were ascending to power or while in office—and the function they serve as an instrument of ‘political intervention’.' (Introduction)   

(p. 462-464)
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