BBC Outlook Born the Wrong Colour So I had to Die. A young South African girl is adopted and grows up in the UK. Sneaking around her mother’s room, she find the truth of her birth and what her birth mother was prepared to do to cover the shame of having a mixed-race child in Apartheid-era South Africa. Very good
New Books in History.. Amy Murrell Taylor’s “Embattled Freedom: Journeys Through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camp” is really cleaning up the awards, and the interviewer here is obviously a big fan. During the Civil War – when the outcome was still uncertain- slave workers took their families into the encampments of Union soldiers. Many of the men were sent to fight with the Union, while the women and children lived in often makeshift quarters in the encampment. However, there were differences between their experiences, and this book traces through different camps and how these slave women and children (not yet Emancipated) were received. You don’t have to have read the book, or even have a very good understanding of the Civil War- I found it really interesting. It’s a shame that the book is so expensive (even the e-book is $32.00!) and I’m not likely to find it in a library in Australia. You can find the interview here.
The History Listen (ABC) Waterloo Bay: that word “massacre”. At the small farming and surfing town of Elliston, on the remote west coast of South Australia, a memorial has been erected to the massacre of indigenous people that occurred in 1849. The use of the word “massacre” on the memorial has split the community.
Who Runs This Place (ABC). This four-part series presented by Richard Aedy started today. In this first episode The Triangle, he looks at the roles of Prime Minister, the Prime Ministers Office, the public service and the security agencies.
Rear Vision (ABC). I’ve had these two podcasts on my phone for ages, and finally got round to listening them. They’re a pair, one (Brexit, British Labour and Jeremy Corbyn) dealing with Brexit and the Labour Party, and the other The Conservative Party and Brexit exploring the Conservative Party’s introduction and fraught relationship with Europe . They take a long-term historical view of the relationship between these political parties and the EEC and EU. There was a lot that I either never knew or had forgotten (a distinction which is becoming harder to be sure about these days). For example, did you know that Britain’s first referendum was over whether to stay in the EEC during the 1970s? These podcasts might be three months old, but they’re still very relevant. What a right stuff-up.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 