Menzies Centre news

On Wednesday 19 January 2011 at a King’s College London ceremony at the Barbican Dr Tim Causer graduated PhD. Tim has been an AHRC-funded scholar at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies for the past three years, completing a thesis entitled ‘Only a place fit for angels and eagles: the Norfolk Island penal settlement, 1825-1855’. Tim is now working as a Research Associate at the Bentham Project at University College London.

January 2011 ‘I wanted to showcase those subjects which thoughtful and talented writers were absorbed by in this particular year; Indeed (I thought), wouldn’t it be good to show what this country, and its culture, was about in 2010? This is how the editor of the Best Australian Essays 2010, the novelist and short story writer Robert Drewe, explained his purposes in compiling and editing the collection.
The volume, recently released by the Melbourne-based publisher, Black Inc., reaches a broad audience of general readers. Its purposes are to present high-quality Australian writing, to represent the most important and insightful things being said in and about Australia today, and to contribute to setting the agenda for public debate. It is therefore pleasing that the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies can claim to be represented in it this year not once, but twice. Menzies Centre and English Department Lecturer Dr Ian Henderson’s revisionist interpretation of one of the most influential essays written on an Australian subject, A.A. Phillips’ ‘The Cultural Cringe’ (1950), appears in the collection. Called ‘“Freud Has a Name for It”: A.A. Phillips’ “The Cultural Cringe”’, the essay began life as a paper at the 2008 British Australian Studies Conference in a panel organised by the Menzies Centre. It was later published in the prestigious Sydney-based literary journal, Southerly before being picked up by Best Australian Essays. It is rare for an academic essay to cross over into public culture in this way, and so is an important intervention by a Menzies Centre staff member in contemporary Australian cultural debate.
The Centre can also claim paternity over another essay in the collection. ‘Patrick White’s London’, by Sydney Morning Herald journalist and White biographer, David Marr, also appears in the volume. Patrick White was the winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Australian to be so honoured. In his essay, Marr tells the story of White’s years in London in the 1930s and 1940s, and the important place that the city retained in his life and literary imagination even after his return to Australia in the late 1940s. The text is based on Marr’s 2010 Menzies Lecture, delivered in London in June as part of the Patrick White: Modernist Impact, Critical Futures conference, which was convened by Ian Henderson and Anouk Lang (University of Birmingham) on behalf of the Menzies Centre, in partnership with the Institute of English Studies, University of London, and the Lincoln Britain-Australia Trust. This major international conference was also supported by Australian literature at the University of Sydney and the British Australian Studies Association. Fur further information about Best Australian Essays 2010, see http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/best-australian-essays-2010

Dr David Dunstan of the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University is the Menzies Fellow for 2010. Together with Carl Bridge and Robert Crawford, David edited and contributed to Australians in Britain: the Twentieth Century Experience (Monash ePress, 2009). He is following up with further research into Australian journalists in Britain after 1945. Together with Carl Bridge, David is working on a book of Australian newspaper cartoons from the Second World War. His essay jointly written with Dr Tom Heenan of Monash University ‘Just a Boy From Bowral’ on Sir Donald Bradman will appear in the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Cricket in 2011. David is chair of the Victorian Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and a contributor. The ADB is free online at http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/

September 2010 On 13 September 2010 Dr Ian Henderson appeared BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour discussing Joan Lindsay's classic Australian novel 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' (1967) with Professor Elizabeth Schafer (Royal Holloway) and presenter Jane Garvey. Woman's Hour will also include a dramatisation of the novel over the whole week. The novel tells of a party of schoolgirls who go missing in the Australian bush after a picnic on St Valentine's Day 1900. It was adapted as a film in 1975, directed by Peter Weir, famous for its haunting depictions of the Australian landscape. Listen again.

September 2010 The Menzies Centre for Australian Studies has relocated to the Strand Campus at King's. The academic staff offices can be found on Level 6 of the King's Building and the Departmental Office is located in S 8.05, Level 8 of the Strand Building. Download directions to the Menzies Centre.

August 2010 Dr Simon Sleight (pictured), a research associate with the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, has won a prestigious award for his doctoral thesis on Melbourne’s youth cultures. In his thesis, ‘The Territories of Youth: Young People and Public Space in Melbourne, c. 1870-1901’, Dr Sleight explored young people’s outdoor activities, offering fresh insights on subjects including larrikin gangs, youthful consumerism, street-based play and children’s autonomy. Now the Australian Historical Association has recognised the study by deeming it worthy of the biennial Serle Award for the best postgraduate thesis in Australian history. Judges Professor Stuart Macintyre and Dr Julia Martinez praised the work as an ‘original and sophisticated study of Melbourne's urban history’, continuing that ‘[Dr Sleight’s] elegant prose evokes the people and townscapes from refreshing and subversive perspectives ... His work combines a remarkably lucid use of historical and sociological theory with an impressive diversity of archival sources ranging from cartoons, photographs and paintings to police records citing child offences on the streets and in the parks of Melbourne’. The thesis – currently being re-worked into book format – speaks to modern concerns regarding youthful violence in cities and the ‘islanding’ of children into separate locations where adult surveillance is routine.
 
Dr Sleight would like to thank his Monash supervisors, Professor Graeme Davison and Dr Christina Twomey, for their expert guidance, and the UK-based Northcote Trust for its generous financial support. Asked to comment further on the accolade, Dr Sleight said ‘I am thrilled – to have scooped this prize is a huge honour. The study of young people’s experiences is a neglected theme in history writing, and I hope this award will open the door to future research projects and encourage others to try to understand societies past and present from the vital perspective of youth.’ Further information.

May 2010 ‘Broadsheets, Broadcasts & Botany Bay: History in the Australian Media’ was the subject of this year’s Trevor Reese Memorial Lecture by Associate Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley, Australia’s leading media historian. The lecture is an annual event of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London, in association with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. One of two major public lectures organised annually by the Menzies Centre, it is held in honour of Dr Reese, a distinguished historian of the British Commonwealth and Australia and Reader at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
 
Speaking to an audience of about 60 in the Downer Room of Australia House on 27 May, Dr Griffen-Foley, the author of several books on Australian media history (and most recently Changing Stations: The Story of Australian Commercial Radio), emphasised the influential role played by newspapers, radio and television in presenting Australians with stories about their past. In the era before the ‘Tele-don’, there were academics who appeared regularly in the media, just as there were journalists, publicists and popular authors who used the then new media of radio to present Australian history for popular consumption. Some of this work was well-researched and even willing to explore subjects such as settler violence towards Aboriginals that many academic historians tended to avoid or underplay.
 
Dr Griffen-Foley’s lecture paid particular attention to the contributions on print and on the airwaves of Frank Clune, whose contributions to the research, presentation and popularisation of Australian history have been mainly ignored. At a time when many of the voices heard over the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) bore more than a passing resemblance to those heard on the BBC, the ABC’s managing director complimented Clune that his material did not need ‘a silky Oxford accent’: ‘We want a He-Man’s voice: perhaps you may have it.’
 
The lecture revealed that the ubiquitous 1970s-80s historical TV mini-series, the more recent presentation of Australian history on television through such reality shows as The Colony and Outback House, and the continuing presentation of high-quality historical documentaries on both Australian radio and television – and particularly the ABC – are part of a much longer tradition.
 
The lecture will shortly be available in published form. Enquiries to menzies.centre@kcl.ac.uk

February 2010 On 18 February 2010 in the Australian High Commission, the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith, in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, launched The High Commissioners: Australia’s Representatives in the United Kingdom, 1910–2010. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, David Miliband, was also present at the function to celebrate 100 years of British-Australian diplomatic relations. The presence of Rolf Harris also created much excitement among the academics in attendance.
 
The book, edited by Professor Carl Bridge, Dr Frank Bongiorno and a colleague in Australia, Dr David Lee, marks the centenary of the arrival in England of the first Australian High Commissioner to London, Sir George Reid, early in 1910. Reid’s posting began what is today Australia’s oldest diplomatic mission. The High Commissioners was published by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and produced in partnership with the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London.
 
The publication traces the history of the office of Australian High Commissioner in London and illuminates the larger story of Anglo-Australian relations in the twentieth century, the evolution of Australia from British colony to independent nation, and the transition of the United Kingdom from imperial power to European Union member. It is also a collective biography of twenty-two individuals, including former prime ministers and ministers, public servants and professional diplomats, who each faced the challenge of projecting Australia’s image and representing the national interest in one of the world’s most important capitals.
 
The book brought together 13 authors from Australia, the United Kingdom and Europe who between them covered every phase in the history of British-Australian relations since the early twentieth century. Professor Bridge wrote on the longest-serving High Commissioner, Stanley Melbourne Bruce, a former conservative prime minister who occupied the office from the early 1930s until after the Second World War, while Dr Bongiorno covered John Beasley, his immediate successor, a former government minister and Labor appointee.

The High Commissioners also contains a chapter on the history of the building, written by another Menzies centre historian, Dr Simon Sleight. Australia House, among its many other distinctions, is well known as the interior of Gringotts Wizarding Bank in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Simon also reports in his chapter that in 1925 ‘a large and boisterous group of King’s College undergraduate “raggers” invaded the Australia House Cinema after the Lord Mayor’s Show that year’. A returned soldier, however, bravely defended the building, threw several students to the ground and dispersed them from the stage. According to one member of the High Commission staff, ‘Some of the students got souvenirs ... and none of them is likely to forget Australia in a hurry’. The evening itself was a more orderly affair.
 
A video clip of the editors’ presentation of the book to the Queen may be found at http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchAndCommonwealth/Australia/Australia.aspx