Q & A with Alexis Bergantz, author of French Connection

In this author Q&A, Bethany Keats interviews Alexis Bergantz about his latest book, French Connection According to the blurb, this is a “little known” history. Why hasn’t it been told before? Why is it worth telling now? For a long time ‘the French’ have been written about as part of an older historiography of […]

Author Q&A with Catherine Fisher

Bethany Keats interviews Catherine Fisher, the author of Sound Citizens: Australian Women Broadcasters Claim their Voice, 1923–1956 (ANU Press) Why has it taken so long to acknowledge the complex history of women in broadcasting in Australia? Like much of women’s history, the contributions of women to broadcasting have been largely ignored as they were not […]

Q&A with Carolyn Collins, author of Save Our Sons: Women, Dissent and Conscription during the Vietnam War

Jacqui Baker interviews Carolyn Collins about her new book Save Our Sons: Women, Dissent and Conscription during the Vietnam War. Congratulations on the publication of your fascinating book, Carolyn! You wrote that you came across Save Our Sons while researching a different topic and time period. What were you researching at the time and how […]

Q&A with Barry Leithhead, author of A Vision for Australia’s Health: Dr Cecil Cook at Work

Cecil Evelyn Aufrere (known as ‘Mick’) Cook was born in Sussex, England in 1897 and moved with his family to Barcaldine in central Queensland at the turn of the twentieth century. Can you describe the main influences on Cook during his upbringing, and how they shaped his subsequent career in public health? Cook’s mother and […]

Q&A with Jenny Hocking, author of The Palace Letters

In our latest author Q&A, Jacquelyn Baker interviews Emeritus Professor Jenny Hocking about The Palace Letters, which describes her long and extraordinary campaign to gain access to the correspondence between the Australian Governor General Sir John Kerr and Queen Elizabeth II in the prelude to the dismissal of the Whitlam government on 11 November 1975. […]

Joanna Cruickshank interviews Kama Maclean about her new book, ‘British India, White Australia’

Kama Maclean’s new book, British India: White Australia, examines the history of the relationship between the two nations. In this interview with Dr Joanna Cruickshank, Kama explains how the treatment of Indian students in Australia during the COVID pandemic bears some resemblance to the difficult experiences of earlier generations of Indians living in Australia under […]

Q&A with Richard Broinowski, author of Under the Rainbow: The Life and Times of E.W. Cole

E.W. Cole, proprietor of Cole’s Book Arcade in Melbourne’s Burke Street Mall, was an amazing man. He condemned the White Australian policy when it was unpopular to do so and had decidedly progressive views about religion. He published the famous Cole’s Funny Picture Books and met his wife through an advertisement he placed in the newspaper. Carolyn Holbrook […]

Q&A with Jacqueline Kent, author of Vida: A Woman For Our Time

Vida Goldstein is one of Australian history’s most interesting and accomplished figures. She campaigned for the rights of women—including the vote —and the disadvantaged, opposed conscription and the First World War and stood unsuccessfully for federal parliament several times. She ought to be more widely known. Carolyn Holbrook interviewed the acclaimed biographer, journalist and broadcaster […]

The Fatal Lure of Politics: A Q&A with Terry Irving on Vere Gordon Childe

Vere Gordon Childe was among the most influential archaeologists of the twentieth century but his connections to the intellectual worlds of the British and Australian Left have, until now, received less attention. In a major new biography, Terry Irving sheds light on Childe’s life as a political theorist, radical intellectual and pre-historian. History PhD student […]

Q&A with Clive Moore, author of Tulagi.

In this Q&A session, Clive Moore talks to Bethany Keats about his recent book, Tulagi, which focuses on the British Solomon Islands Protectorate (BSIP) and its original administrative centre, Tulagi. Why is Tulagi an important story that needs to be told? Tulagi, a small island in the Ngela or Florida Group, was the first […]