Lawrence Goldman: Robert Peel
Workshop
Peel: One British Prime Minister and Four Personalities Robert Peel was Conservative prime minister briefly in the 1830s and then again between 1841 and 1846 during which period he is famous for the repeal of the Corn Laws, the tariffs imposed on imported foodstuffs. His character and motivation…
2019 Seymour Biography Lecture
Lecture
The core challenge of political biography is to answer the question, ‘why politics?’ What inner needs did it fulfil, and what emotional and psychological resources were mustered for its accomplishment? These questions are harder to answer for Alfred Deakin than for less complex political leaders.…
Patrick Mullins: Reflections on Tiberius with a Telephone
Workshop
Monash University academic James Walter once wrote that it is common for biographers to dive into their work, encounter the typical, everyday issues of biography, and afterward to engage in a sort of ‘anguished methodological essay’ that only manages to repeat, with minor variation, what Lytton…
Gabrielle Carey: ‘Only Happiness Here’
Workshop
‘Only Happiness Here’: The Life and Work of Elizabeth von Arnim Born in Australia in 1866 as Mary Beauchamp, Elizabeth von Arnim was the author of 21 best-selling novels, a lover of H.G. Wells, a Prussian Countess and the wife—for a short time—of Francis Russell, brother of Bertrand. She was also…
The Politics and Implications of Recent Life Writing
Workshop
Life-writing is a broad genre encompassing all manner of ‘ego documents’ including autobiography, diaries, journals, letters, memoirs, and oral testimony. It is not only an historical genre, but it is an increasingly interdisciplinary specialism. It is said to reflect extreme individualism of late…
Ashley Barnwell: Keeping the nation’s secrets
Workshop
Keeping the nation’s secrets: ‘colonial storytelling’ within and about Australian families Recent studies of the ‘genealogy craze’ focus on how family historians appeal to ancestors to fashion their own identities, but ‘doing family history’ can also be a form of national identity work. In Finding…
Gwenda Tavan: ‘Curse the Press!’
Workshop
‘Curse the Press!’: Arthur Calwell’s battles with the Australian media and the perils of resentment politics Arthur Augustus Calwell was Australia’s Minister for Information (1943-49) and its first Minister for Immigration (1945-49). These roles required strong governmental and press co-operation…