Short History of…Mount Rushmore. I’m almost certain that Donald Trump will try to get his face onto Mount Rushmore. The carvings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were commenced in 1927 and took 14 years to complete on a mountain that was regarded as sacred by the Sioux. Known as the ‘Six Grandfathers’ for the six large granite outcrops which it contains, it was supposed to be Native American land under the 1868 Treaty of Ford Lararmie, but that got torn up when the Black Hills were seized for mining. In the 1920s there was a boom of motor tourism to beauty spots, and Doane Robinson, the state historian of South Dakota, wanted a “Big” thing that people could travel to see. At first he suggested that six American west heroes should be carved into the mountain (Lewis and Clark, their expedition guide Sacagawea, Lakota chief Red Cloud,Buffalo Bill Cody, and Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse). But they brought in sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who suggested the four presidents instead to give it a national focus. Borglum was a passionate but pugilistic man, who had previously been engaged on a Confederate carving on Stone Mountain, Georgia, funded by the KKK, until he was sacked and the work he had already done on the carving was blasted away. There was lobbying to have $460,000 put aside for the work on Mt Rushmore, but Borglum decided to just have $250,00 from the government with the rest from private donations. He made 1:12 scale models in his studio, but the plans had to be redrafted because of the geology of the mountain and because there was a black vein running through the rock. He planned to add torsos to the bodies, but with the financial restrains of WW2, they went for just the heads. Gutzon Borglum died in 1941 and his son Lincoln took over. The sculpture ended up costing $990,000 and it opened in 1941. In 1971 the site was occupied by Native American protesters, and in 1981 a court ruled that the Sioux were owed compensation. However, they refused to take it, wanting the land instead. Fortunately it seems that the geology precludes adding any more heads, but I’m sure that that wouldn’t deter Trump.
In the Shadows of Utopia Season 2 Episode 18 A Cambodian Coup! The “Red Prince” falls Time Period Covered 1969 – 1970. In 1969, Pol Pot and his wife, and a number of CPK delegates walked to Hanoi. They wanted to continue the struggle against Sihanouk, but the Communist Party of Vietnam wanted them to give up, because Sihanouk was too useful to them. Meanwhile, there were increasing numbers of North Vietnamese troops in Cambodia attracting increased US bombing, with Sihanouk’s tacit approval. As Sihanouk headed overseas, by this time Lon Nol was head of the government and Sirik Matat, Sihanouk’s cousin, was in charge of the economy. There was increasing restlessness about the North Vietnamese presence in Cambodia. So in Sihanouk’s absence the 5000 real note was devalued, which had a large effect because 5000 reals was the denomination that the Viet Kong used to buy rice from the Cambodian farmers. Bombing of the north east region was ordered, and false protests were staged at the North Vietnamese embassy. On 11 March 1970 Sihanouk announced that he was returning to Cambodia, and Lon Nol announced that the North Vietnamese and Communist troops had to leave within 3 days. Sihanouk changed his mind and decided not to come back after all, and threatened to kill the cabinet who had been acting in his absence, accusing Sirik of bringing in the Vietnamese. A coup ensued. Lon Nol was forced to hand over control of the Army, and the Congress voted to overthrow Sihanouk. Meanwhile Sihanouk was in Moscow, and both Russia and China asked if Sihanouk would continue his support of the Communist cause. China was worried about Soviet influence and they suggested an uprising, using the Communist Party of Kampuchea as the resistance, with Vietnamese military training and arms, and Sihanouk as its ‘face’. Sihanouk was fuelled with a desire for revenge against his enemies, blaming traitors in the assembly and their US imperial masters and he called for a guerilla uprising. Pol Pot, who all of a sudden found himself in demand, accepted the offer under the names of the ‘Three Ghosts’ Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn, nationalists who had been disappeared and supposedly (but not) executed by Sihanouk. Pol Pot himself stayed in the background. Was there CIA involvement? Probably the US was happy enough with Sihanouk, but they probably had contact with all sorts of people.
We don’t go into the city together much because Steve finds walking difficult, but the milder weather was such a relief today that I really wanted to do something ‘in town’. So off we went….
First stop was the Royal Historical Society of Victoria to see their current exhibition ‘The Burying of Melbourne’
In the mid-1850s some areas of the Melbourne CBD were buried under a layer of clay at the direction of Melbourne City Council, a rather extraordinary event that until recently had been largely forgotten. It is only in recent years that archaeologists carrying out the excavations required prior to developments in the city have uncovered evidence of the clay layer.
A study commissioned by the Heritage Council of Victoria found that the burying was part of efforts by the City Council to control flooding, caused largely by the original laying out of Melbourne’s street grid without due consideration of the flow of water over the underlying topography.
The depositing of the clay layer, metres thick in some places, had a significant effect on the lives and circumstances of those affected but did result in the sealing off of a layer of archaeology stemming from the earliest days of European settlement.
This exhibition, The Burying of Melbourne, describes events leading up to the burial and looks at some of the archaeology discovered beneath the clay.
The problem was that people started building their houses before the roads were built, which meant that when the roads finally did come through, the houses were much lower than the road. As a result, the houses flooded in heavy rain. The council ordered that the properties had to be filled up to road level with clay. In some cases, particularly where the houses were not owned by the occupants, the house was in effect entombed by the clay, with new houses built on top of them. The layer of clay was located when a compulsory archaelogical inspection was made for a new development near the Wesleyan church in Lonsdale Street. Comparisons were made between the contour maps pre-filling and after-filling to identify the sites where the clay was likely to have been spread. Six terrace houses dating from the 1840s were found in Jones Lane.
This exhibition is not high-tech: indeed, it is mainly maps and photographs of the archaeological dig. There are a few of the objects on display that were located on the site, most particularly the level under the clay. But I find the idea of a whole layer sealed off by clay for 170 years quite fascinating.
Then back onto the train and down to the Swanston Street tram for a quick trip up to the NGV International in St Kilda Rd. I wasn’t interested in the $40 Westwood/ Kawakubo exhibition (when did these exhibitions become so expensive?) and just stuck to the freebies. Somehow or other we ended up in the British and European Collection 13-16 Century, which you can see in a 3D version here if it doesn’t induce too much nausea for you. Actually you can see it online better than you can in real life because at least they turned the lights on to film it: probably because of the age of the artwork, it is very dimly lit. Their signage of the objects themselves is appalling- white print of about 12 pt font on grey behind glass. I just couldn’t read it at all. However, given that I’m not likely to visit Europe again, it was a little bit like being in a grand European cathedral close up.
What I really intended to see was a display of the National Gallery of Victoria Travelling Scholarship. This is a tiny exhibition, tucked away on the first floor near the escalators. The NGV established its Travelling Scholarship in 1887, just 25 years after the Gallery opened. Awarded every three years, the three-year scholarship granted a stipend to study at art epicentres across Europe. Scholarship-holders were required to provide to the Gallery a replica of an Old Master painting, a nude study, and an original composition. A cheap way of increasing the size of the collection, I suppose. The exhibition is mainly just a projection on a wall, showing biographical details of several recipients (nicely balanced between male and female artists) with a few glass cases containing objects belonging to Constance Stokes (nee Parkin) trip that she received as part of her scholarship in 1929. Just a slight young girl, you get a sense of how exciting it must have been to travel over to London to study at the Royal Academy of Arts, with her passport, photographs and ball invitations.
It’s appropriate that I should be writing this review on January 26, Australia Day. Here’s a recommendation: if you’re going to read a survey history of Australia, then read this one.
There’s lots of survey or short histories written by eminent historians to choose from, many of which appear in several editions as they were updated to encompass later events: Keith Hancock’s Australia first written in 1930; Gordon Greenwood’sAustralia A Social and Political History (1955) Manning Clark’s A Short History of Australia (1963) ; John Rickard’s Australia: A Cultural History (1988); Creating a Nation (1994) by Pat Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath and Marian Quartly; David Day’s Claiming a Continent (1997) and Stuart Macintyre’s A Concise History of Australia (2000). There’s even Alex McDermott’s Australian History for Dummies (2011). One could quite justifiably ask “Does the world need another short history of Australia?” And I would answer: yes, and it should be this one.
In 1968 New Zealand historian Keith Sinclair wrote an article for Historical Studies called ‘On Writing Shist’ (that second ‘s’ is very important!) He pointed out that shist (i.e. short history) is not a summary of what is known in order to be memorized, but a summary interpretation of a topic, intended to make it understandable. It should be aimed at the educated non-specialist, and the author cannot assume more than the most vague background knowledge. Facts are illustrative and form a “very thin, hard skeleton”, and the overwhelming problem is what to leave out, rather than put in. The heart of the task is to shape the overall pattern of ideas, facts and prose, interwoven into a pattern of thought and story. It is meant to be read, rather than consulted, utilizing the novelists’ tools of suspense and pace, driven by the author’s sense of commitment to his subject.
McKenna addresses the issue of the need for “new ways of thinking about the nation’s history” right in his first chapter. He writes:
Most national histories are ‘rise and rise’ narratives. They narrate the nation’s formation and walk chronologically through familiar milestones. In Australia’s case, there’s a chapter on Indigenous Australia before 1788, before moving onto the main story: penal colony to gold rushes and responsible government, then to Federation, the First World War and the Anzac legend, the Depression, the Second World War, postwar reconstruction and the Cold War; before waves of non-British migration, the new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s and the end of White Australia usher in the emergence of a more open, global economy and culturally diverse society. Or words to that effect. The history of the nation-state- from one formative event to the next. (p. 7)
So how is he proposing to avoid this straightjacket? His fundamental strategy is to see Australia as a continent rather than a nation, to turn both Edward Barton’s declaration “a nation for a continent and a continent for a nation” on its head. He foregrounds place, both the climate, ecologies and histories of different regions of Australia, and the Indigenous understanding of history which can never be divorced from place. And rather than that awkward, dangling introductory chapter of “The Aborigines”, he integrates Indigenous perspectives and actions throughout the whole book, from start to finish. Nor does he follow a well-ploughed chronological trench: indeed, Captain Cook and Botany Bay don’t appear in detail until Chapter 9, more than half-way through the book, in a chapter titled ‘Facing North’.
He starts right up front in Chapter 1 ‘The Founding Lie’, with a reflection on the Sydney Opera House, its design and construction, then considers its site – Bennelong Point. In Chapter 2 ‘From Ubirr’ he joins hundreds of visitors at Ubirr, in the Kakadu National Park looking north to the Arafura Sea at dawn- again, starting at a place- to emphasize the great migration from Asia into northern Australia, and the influence of trade with the north. Chapter 3 ‘The Island Dilemma’ looks at the sense of geography and the ‘island’ perspective that encouraged isolation as both a negative and positive force. He takes us to Christmas Island, both its now-deserted CI Club for administrators and Europeans, then its use as a detention centre for asylum seekers. Ch.4 ‘Taking the Land’ (and there, again is that ‘place’ emphasis) starts with John Howard at the Longreach Stockman’s Hall of Fame in 1997, promising that government legislation would ensure pastoralists’ rights after the Wik decision. He traverses land policy from Cook’s act of possession to the spread of ‘settlement’ and Aboriginal resistance, especially in Queensland. He notes that Australia has silenced not only the evidence of frontier warfare, but also the many efforts at reconciliation that were made between British settlers and First Nations Australians (p. 75).
Chapter 5 ‘War and Memory’ takes us to Australia’s “most storied beach”, 15,000 kms away. In a desperate craving to be connected to European history through blood sacrifice:
Over time, the birthplace of their nation was conveniently displaced 15,000 kilometres offshore to Anzac Cove. Australia thus became the only modern nation-state to create an origin myth not located on its own soil p.90
He points out that, two decades before the outbreak of the Great War, and for at least a decade after the war ended, in areas like Wave Hill and Victoria River of the Northern Territory and the Pilbara and Kimblerley regions of Western Australia, frontier violence was still occurring. War memorials to the First World War stand in villages, towns and cities throughout Australia, but the Australian War Memorial resists calls to recognize the loss of life in frontier wars.
Chapter 6 ‘Fire and Water’ takes us to Red Bluff, Kalbarri in Western Australia way back on 25 January 1697, and the desperate search for water by the men and officers from the Dutch East India Company who anchored three ships in Gantheaume Bay and rowed towards the coast. Drought, fire and flood are “a cycle as ancient as the country itself”, and while non-Indigenous Australians have long been familiar with bushfires and floods, the memory of one is swiftly erased by the arrival of the other, as if we’re fighting the same battles with the country (p. 111). Here are the plans for irrigation using the Murray-Darling, the Snowy River scheme and the fires at Mallacoota in December 2019. In Chapter 7 ‘Fault Lines’ we go to Waverley cemetery in Sydney, and the grave of Louisa and Henry Lawson, before embarking on a really good analysis of Catholic/Protestant sectarianism, touching on Ned Kelly, Billy Hughes and conscription. Chapter 8 ‘Fault Lines’ starts with Dorothy Napangardi, one of Australia’s most acclaimed artists, and the gradual recognition and appreciation of Indigenous ways of belonging to Country in the late twentieth century. For many non-Indigenous Australians, works of First Nation artists are a reminder that, as recently arrived migrants in a country, we do not have the same keys to Country. Modern Australia has always been a migrant society, and McKenna returns 19th century migration, especially from Ireland, and the Chinese migrants lured by the prospect of wealth on the goldfields. He goes through the conversion from a white, British enclave to a diverse multicultural nation, while noting that it was driven by self-interest and economic necessity. He reminds us of the memories of discrimination and prejudice through the story of William Yang, born in 1943 on a tobacco farm on the Atherton Tablelands. In Chapter 9 ‘Facing North’ (there’s that sense of place and geography again) we finally meet Captain Cook face to face. To illustrate the short-term economic mentality of resource extraction he turns not to gold, but to pearls, and the pearling industry not just for its importation of divers from Asia, but its mix of voluntary and forced Aboriginal labour (I didn’t know about this). He then moves on to New Guinea, and Australia’s WW2 in the Pacific.
I’d like to look at Chapter 10 ‘The Big Picture’ in more detail as an example of the diffuse way in which McKenna writes, his integration of stories of individual people into broader historical events, and the sweep of a theme across time. He starts with Charles Doudiet’s sketches of Eureka, which were only discovered in 1996 through a Canadian family which found them in their attic. These sketches verified for the first time the location of the Eureka Rebellion and the use of the Eureka flag, and they are the springboard for McKenna to discuss Australian democracy and its evolution from Eureka and the anti-transportation movement, through to self-government of the colonies in the mid 19th century. Then he moves to a second picture, Tom Roberts’ ‘Opening of the First Parliament of the Australian Commonwealth 9 May 1901′ and federation as a political compromise that combined elements of the US federal constitution and the Westminster system. The opening of Parliament House in Canberra in 1927 had many guests, but two uninvited guests were Jimmy Clements and John Noble, two Wiradjuri elders who walked 150 kilometres from Brungle Aboriginal station near Tumut in NSW to attend the opening. Here McKenna turns to Indigenous agitation for their rights in the 1920s and 1930s, set against Queen Elizabeth’s tour of 1954, the first reigning British monarch to set foot on Australian soil. He returns to Indigenous activism and the 1967 referendum, and the myths that surround it, before moving on to Whitlam and his deliberate cultivation of what Whitlam called “a vigorous national spirit” and ending the era of assimilation in favour of land rights and self-determination. This was encapsulated by the photograph of Whitlam pouring a handful of red earth into the hands of land rights leader Vincent Lingiari in 1975. However, the most seismic shift was the High Court Decision in the Mabo case, and he returns to Eddie Mabo’s sketch of his ancestral land on Mer which hangs not far from Tom Roberts’ ‘Big Picture’ in Parliament House. McKenna finishes the chapter with another painting of the people on Mer executed by Tom Roberts on his way to London in 1903. Twenty years after his arrival in London, Roberts presented the painting to the British Museum, and there it stayed undiscovered until found in 2009 by a curator from the National Museum of Australia.
He closes his book with an Epilogue titled ‘Modernity and Antiquity’ which starts with suburbia and the humble Sydney houses of both John Howard and Paul Keating. He notes that in the half-century since the dismissal of the Keating government, the old verities have vanished: Australia is now one of the world’s most diverse, multicultural and liberal democracies. The Indigenous cultures that White Australia tried to eradicate are now fundamental to the nation’s identity. From a protectionist economic policy, we are now an open, free-trade economy; the alliance with the US remains the linch-pin of its defence; the population has doubled since the mid 1970s and there is a distinctive rise of environmental consciousness, with the Tasmanian Greens the first Green party in the world. He notes that the closer we come to the present, the harder it is to discern which reforms will be of lasting significance. He returns to the “Big Lie” with which he started his book, and the question that continues to gnaw at Australia’s soul is how to tell the truth about the nation’s history and what Noel Pearson called “a rightful place” for First Nations Australians. Here are the apologies, the Uluru statement and the referendum campaign. He closes as he started with a place: this time Lake Mungo National Park (the most spiritual, life-changing place that I have visited in Australia) and the potential for Mungo to be “for all Australians, black and white. It can embrace us all in its spirituality, and draw us closer to the land.” (p. 266)
This is a beautifully written, really carefully crafted and highly original book. Although part of the ‘Shortest History’ series that ranges across the whole world, I feel that it is far more directed at an Australian audience than an international one, but both readers could take much from the book. Indeed, the word ‘shortest’ obscures the deep-time and Indigenous emphasis of the book. By eschewing completely the chronological approach, he prioritizes understanding of a theme illustrated through many kaleidoscopic prisms. In the author’s note at the end of the book, he says that he decided to “say more about some things rather than a little about many things”. He has certainly succeeded in this. His prose is beautiful, drawing your interest from vignettes based on people, with a pace that doesn’t get bogged down in details. It’s excellent. Read it.
My rating: 10/10
Sourced from: Review copy from Black Inc. but that hasn’t influenced my rating!
Journey Through TimeEpisode 27 The Trial that Made Hitler Famous Ep. 2 It wasn’t the Beer Hall Putsch that made Hitler internationally famous, but the trial held afterwards. After the coup had collapsed, Hitler and his group marched through Munich hoping that crowds would join them (they didn’t) and there was a brief shoot-out where four police were killed. Hitler fled Munich, but was arrested. Even though the putsch ended in farce, Hitler saw the trial as a platform. One of the panel of judges in particular was sympathetic to him: he was not forced to wear prison clothes, it was a 24 day trial and he was allowed to make long speeches and cross-examine witnesses himself. He pleaded guilty but nonetheless some judges wanted to acquit him. He received a five year sentence but released after 13 months. He was given special treatment in jail, but it fed his martyr-complex. Once the Nazis gained power in the 1930s, the anniversary of the putsch was celebrated, and in fact Kristallnacht was conducted on the anniversary. The two presenters, David Olusoga and Sarah Churchwell, then went on to draw parallels with the current day.
The Rest is ClassifiedEpisode 99: Putin’s Secret Army: Trump, Wagner and Russia (Ep.2) As an entrepreneurial caterer and restauranteur, Prigozhin got into P.R. where he was not beyond indulging in dirty tricks. Because of his PR skills, the Kremlin turned to him. Prigozhin was behind the Internet Research Agency, a troll factory based in Russia employing 800-900 workers. First the Internet Research Agency targetted a domestic Russian audience, particularly demonizing Alexy Navalny. In 2014 after the invasion of the Crimea, it moved its focus to the West, then it looked to the 2016 US election. The Internet Research Agency paid for Facebook ads, often pushing both sides, in order to sow division. At this stage Prigozhin became visible to the FBI, leading to a 2016 FBI indictment. He denied the connection with the Internet Research Agency, and took it to the courts. The title of Peter Pomerantsev’s book sums it up: Nothing is True and Everything is possible. Doesn’t that just describe the world we live in?
The Rest is History. I haven’t listened to my old friends Dominic and Tom for a while, so I scrolled back to 2022 and found a series that they did on Australia’s prime ministers to mark Albanese’s victory. Although Episode 187 is titled Australia’s Prime ministers from Edmund Barton to Robert Menzies, it didn’t give much attention to the early prime ministers (perhaps I was day-dreaming at that point?) and they concentrate on post-WW2 prime ministers. Now, as I found with their episode on the Tupamaros, Dom and Tom might be very good – are very good- on European, British and American history, they’re not so hot on the rest of the world, especially ‘middle powers’ like us, or the Global South. They deal respectfully with Menzies, Curtin, Chifley and Menzies again, but in Episode 188 Part 2 they become a little skittish. They point out that Harold Holt was Australia’s youngest Member of Parliament and succeeded Menzies. They laughed (as do we all) at the unfortunate naming of the Harold Holt Swimming Pool. They think that Gorton was an excellent character, almost French in personality, war hero and larrikin. They question (as do we all) Billy Macmahon’s sexuality and his propensity to steal things (really?). They see Whitlam as a patrician figure, who was brought undone by his plan to borrow petro-dollars during the oil shock. They thought that Fraser looked like the classic Australian, welcomed the Vietnamese and opposed apartheid- and he lost his trousers. By Episode 189 Part 3 they are completely silly, and admittedly, they have plenty to work with here. Hawkie held the world record for sculling a yard of ale, but was economically similar to Thatcher; Keating was impressive but a paradox; Howard was stolid; Rudd was part of a culture of spills; Gillard exemplified The Guardian newspaper in female form; Abbott exemplified the Daily Mail. Turnbull could have been a Labor P.M. ( I rather wish he was, personally) while Morrison exemplified the Man at the Garden Centre and looked like a koala. So as you can see, Dom and Tom’s powers of analysis declined over this three part series, and ended in farce. Perhaps Australia did too.
I had not had much interest in reading this book, deterred perhaps by the glamour shot on the front cover. Even though I very much enjoyed Barak Obama’s Dreams From My Father, I wasn’t particularly drawn to reading a First Lady’s life story, thank you very much. But it was a Book Group selection, and conscientious Book Grouper as I am, I resolved to read the book and I am so glad that I did. There was much more in this book that I might ever have anticipated.
The preface started with really good writing. It’s post-Presidency, and Michelle is alone in the house for almost the first time (excepting the security guards down in the garage). Her daughters are out, Barak is not at home, and she decides to make a grilled cheese sandwich. There’s no one to make it for her, no-one to say “Mrs Obama, let me get that”, no one to look askance at her desire for such homely comfort food. She sits on the back doorstep, and eats the sandwich.
The book proper is divided into three parts: Becoming Me, Becoming Us, and Becoming More. Becoming Me traces her early upbringing on the South Side of Chicago, where her remarkably hands-off parents bring her up to be an intelligent, independent young woman, super-organized and conscientious, ambitious and methodical. Becoming Us chronicles her relationship with Barak Obama, and her switch from corporate law to the non-profit sector. The ‘us’ expands to include her two daughters, born through IVF, and the tension she feels between being a professional woman, and a mother. Barak is becoming increasingly involved in politics, first as a state congressman, and then as presidential candidate, although she is often angry and resentful of the demands that politics make on their relationship. Becoming More takes us into the Obama presidency, and the weird home-life this imposes on their family. She needs to carve out her own identity as First Lady, even though this is a role that is not of her choosing, and she struggles to keep some sense of normality for her daughters.
The book is very honest. Barak comes over as a highly intelligent if selfish man, infuriating in his messiness, chronic lateness and lack of attention to detail. She for her part comes over as rather controlling and chronically insecure about whether she is good enough. The awareness of being a black woman in a predominantly white political milieu accompanies her always. She talks about the strains in their marriage as her life is subsumed into his ambitions, and her eventual decision to keep some sort of family routine of dinner and bedtime which Barak has to accommodate to, instead of the other way around. Her mother is a saint: I don’t know that I would get up at 5.00 a.m. to mind my grandchildren while my daughter went to the gym- if fact, I know that I wouldn’t (just in case any of my children get ideas).
She does not even try to hide her contempt for Donald Trump, which hardened even more when he won the Presidency. Trump’s actions in demolishing the East Wing seem even more egregious now, after reading about an engaged First Lady who opened the White House up to many people, through that very East Wing that no longer exists.
At first, I was so impressed with the writing in this book that I was rather disappointed when I learned that it had been ghost-written, or at least written with other people. Does that matter, I wonder? For me, probably yes, because I feel that her writing has been mediated through the other author, and I feel disappointed that the words are not hers. But this doesn’t detract from the honesty that pervades this book. She doesn’t once mention the word ‘feminist’ but the tensions between motherhood, professionalism and politics reflect the viewpoints of a modern, engaged intelligent woman that the world was lucky enough to have as First Lady for eight years.
My rating: A rather surprising 8.5
Read because: Reading Group Book
Sourced from: Darebin Library as part of their reading groups program.
It’s just as well that I usually (not always) keep note of films that I have seen, because it was only by consulting this blog that I discovered that I had in fact seen the first Knives Out movie, just as my husband said I had. And it seems that I enjoyed it, too, just as I enjoyed this third movie in the series. As with the first movie, it has a brilliant cast including Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc, along with Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin and Andrew Scott).
Josh O’Connor plays ex-boxer turned priest Jud Duplenticy who is assigned to the parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude after punching another deacon. There he finds a small congregation in the thrall of the vindictive and thundering Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), who had taken over the parish from his grandfather. (Not quite sure how these familial links work with a supposedly celibate priesthood?) When Monsignor Wicks is found murdered in a small anteroom adjoining the altar, in full view of the congregation, which of the misfit congregation could have done it? Or was it Fr Dupenticy himself, even though the congregation could see him sitting there beside the altar?
Actually, I guessed who the murderer was early in the movie, which is most unusual for me. However, I was glad that the end of the movie tied up the convoluted plot neatly. Good fun.
My rating: 4 stars (out of 5) And it’s on Netflix already!
Journey Through Time Episode 26 The Failed Nazi Coup (Episode 1) The Munich Beer Hall Putsch was the time when Hitler could have, and should have been stopped. In 1923 there were dozens of far right parties with paramilitary wings. The Treaty of Versailles had demanded the loss of lands still in German hands (much as Russia is demanding of Ukraine now). Particularly in conservative Bavaria, the German defeat was blamed on the ‘stab in the back’ from progressives and Jews. Knowing the importance of visual images, and inspired by the Italian fascists’ March on Rome, on 8 November 1923 Hitler and approximately 600 supporters marched on the beer hall Bürgerbräukeller, where Gustav Ritter von Kahr—the Minister-President of Bavaria was speaking. They surrounded the hall, and held von Kahr and other speakers at gunpoint in an adjoining room until they declared their support for the uprising . Although Hitler had the crowd in the hall eating out of his hand, the expected crowds outside did not materialize and the whole thing collapsed in farce.
In Our Time Another one from the archives. Little Women features Bridget Bennett Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Leeds; Erin Forbes Senior Lecturer in African American and U.S. Literature at the University of Bristol and Tom Wright Reader in Rhetoric and Head of the Department of English Literature at the University of Sussex. The podcast starts of with Louise May Alcott’s lifestory, emphasizing her parents’ eccentricity for the time and the influence of the Transcendentalists. Alcott herself was a prolific writer, although much of it was ‘sensation literature’, mainly written under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard. She did not particularly want to write for a teenaged girl market (not that there was a concept of ‘teenager’ at that time), but she was manipulated into writing it by her publisher who promised to publish her father’s book in return. Little Women was published in two parts. The first part was modelled on Pilgrim’s Progress, with the four girls each trying to overcome their personal flaws. Part 2 follows their adult lives. She didn’t want to write this one either, so she intentionally married Jo off to the Professor, who was not likely to appeal to many readers. The panellists then go on to talk about the film depictions of Little Women over time, and the way that increasingly there has been a conflation between Jo and Alcott herself, particularly in the most recent Greta Gerwig version.
The Documentary (BBC)When Christian Nationalists Came To Town The small Tennessee town of Gainesboro population 900, overwhelmingly Trump voters (80%), is disconcerted when a large parcel of land is bought up by a conservative developer with the aim of forging an “aligned” community based on shared values like “faith, family, and freedom“. It attracts young men, looking for a traditional family life and holding a particular view of the role of the church in society, and the locals don’t like it.
The Rest is ClassifiedEp.98 Putin’s Secret Army: The Rise of Prigozhin (Ep.1) Even though Prigozhin was known as ‘Putin’s chef’, he was never actually a cook: instead, he was a restaurateur, among many other things. He was born in 1961 in St Petersburg (the old Leningrad) to a middle class family, but he left school early and fell into bad company. From petty crime he escalated to a robbery with violence at the age of 18 and was sentenced to 13 years in a penal colony. He was released in 1990, as the old Soviet Union was collapsing. He started off by selling hot dogs, then moved into grocery stores, casinos, clubs and restaurants. At the same time, Putin was working his own way up in the thuggish capitalism of the 1990s. Prigozhin became Putin’s catering man, and President Putin brought the Japanese Prime Minister and G. W. Bush to Prigozhin’s restaurants when they visited. In 2011 Putin became Prime Minister, then moved back to being President. When protests broke out (and Putin hates protests), Putin turned to Prigozhin.
Cormoran Strike books, written by J. K. Rowling under the nom-de-plume Robert Galbraith, are for me a long-form type of comfort food. Very long-form, because like the Harry Potter books, these seem to be getting longer. Lethal White is the fourth in the series, and it comes in at a hefty 784 pages.
Detective stories are a genre, with recurring themes which are both part of their appeal and part of their frustration. In the case of the Cormoran Strike books, how long can Galbraith keep the unresolved sexual tension (UST) between Strike and Robin going? This book starts off with Robin’s wedding to the insipid Matthew. Surely a marriage should dampen any progress in the UST realm, but this is not to be. But how many more volumes can Galbraith keep this going? And surely if the UST becomes resolved, that will be the end of their relationship because who wants a married-couple detective agency? And on an unrelated theme, why doesn’t Comoran do something about his throbbing stump where his leg was amputated? Surely additional surgery is in order, or a new prosthesis or something! Moreover, how many more times is Robin going to end up in peril as the case draws to its close? Although, having said that, poor Nikki in ‘Silent Witness’ spends much of her time kidnapped and threatened- it seems to go with the territory that the female investigator- while her male counterparts need to work out how to ‘rescue’ her. But I guess that all these formulaic aspects are part of the genre.
Set during the London Olympic Games, Strike is approached by mentally ill man, Billy, who says that he saw a child being buried years ago. Is it true? At the same time, Strike contracted by politician Jasper Chiswell (Chizzle) to investigate blackmail for something that was not illegal years ago, but now is. As it turns out, the two cases are connected.
Meanwhile, Robin has married Matthew-and she is unhappy from the start. Strike encounters his past lover, Charlotte, who is now pregnant with twins and unhappily married too. Strike is in an uncommitted relationship with Lorelei, who wants more from the relationship than he can give.
Galbraith introduces a huge range of characters into the book, but somehow manages to keep control of them all. I like the way that the author has Comoran or Robin sit down and mentally draw the whole case together, neatly encapsulating it for this reader who can find herself completely confused. It’s like drawing a deep breath, before plunging underwater again. Within this complex ensemble, Galbraith has a number of pairs (fitting, really, for a parliamentary detective story where ‘pairing’ is part of the political scene)
Each chapter is headed by an epigraph from Henrik Ibsen’s play Rosmersholm (1886). I must admit that I don’t know the play, and Dr Beatrice Groves has done the work of drawing the links between Lethal White and Ibsen’s play. As with many of Galbraith’s books, the reason for the title is with-held until well into the book. In this case, we need to wait until Chapter 42 to learn that Lethal White is not a form of cocaine, or the nick-name of a thug, but instead is a horse disease.
I’m not normally a detective-fiction fan, but Galbraiths are different. I will keep turning to the Cormoran Strike series when I have tired of other genres or want to escape from non-fiction into a well-plotted if formulaic series that keeps me reading until far too late at night.
Big Ideas (ABC) This talk, recorded at the University of Technology Sydney’s Vice Chancellor’s Democracy Forum on 14 May 2025 features Sarah Churchwell, who is one of the presenters of the Journey Through Time podcasts that I’m enjoying. She is the author of The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby, Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream, and The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells. From the ABC website it says: Sarah Churchwell takes you on a gripping and confronting journey into America’s recent past to explain its extraordinary present, starting with dark story at the heart of that American classic Gone with the Wind. Knowledge lies at the heart of a healthy democracy, and its many custodians include libraries, universities, cultural institutions, and a free and independent media. So what happens when these institutions are intimidated, dismantled or destroyed, as is happening in America right now, under the government of President Donald Trump? I really enjoyed it.
The Birth Keepers- the Guardian. The Birth Keepers This year-long investigation by Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne looks at Emilee Saldaya and Yolande Norris-Clark, two influencers who made millions selling a radical version of free birth where women would birth ‘wild’ with no medical intervention whatsoever through their Free Birth Society. I was appalled by the length of time that some of these women laboured after their waters had broken, and the hands-off attitude of a baby ‘choosing’ to take a breath. Despite having no formal medical training, these two doulas created courses that have ensured that the Free Birth movement has moved world-wide, while netting them a fortune. There are six episodes.
Short History Of.. Having seen the film Nuremberg, I decided I’d listen to Short History’s take on The Nuremberg Trial. I was far more impressed with this podcast than I expected, fearing a couple of kids giggling, but it was very professional and the narrator has a lovely voice. At the Moscow Conference of 1943 it was decided that Germany would be held criminally responsible for the atrocities committed during the war, but this was uncharted territory. Churchill wanted the death penalty, without trial; Stalin wanted a judicial trial but with the outcome already decided, America wanted the Germans treated as any other judicial process. One of the problems was that the Germans’ actions were not crimes when they were committed. In the end the prosecutors settled on four charges (i) conspiracy to wage aggressive war, which encompassed the crimes before the war began (ii) crimes against peace (iii) war crimes (iv) crimes against humanity. It was decided that the trials needed to take place in Germany in front of the German people. They would try 24 people, comprising a cross-section of high ranking officials across all sectors, although in the end there were only 21 defendants. It was not difficult to find defence lawyers, because many lawyers craved the spotlight in an exotic social environment. They did not use witnesses, but documents. In the second week they showed film of the concentration camps, which had a seismic impact. Hermann Göring was the ringleader of the defendants: he and Speer were the most forceful, the rest were rather pathetic. 12 were sentenced to death, 7 others were imprisoned and there were 3 acquittals. Within 10 days all appeals were rejected. The hanging equipment arrived on 13 October, but on 15 October Göring suicided before his execution which was scheduled that night. The International Military Tribunal packed up at the conclusion of the first trial. There were twelve other Nuremberg trials, but the first one was the only truly international trial.
I often find that there is a sort of brittle formality about books written in early-mid twentieth-century Australia, echoing the slightly-British, self-conscious tone of newsreaders and documentary narrators that you hear in black-and-white footage from the 50s and 60s.This book, first published in 1966, and reissued by Text in 2012 starts off in a similar way. The scenario of two sisters, Laura and Clare, being brought into the headmistress’s office to hear of their father’s death and their removal from school evoked children’s books of the past (Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess, anyone?) The focus at first is on sixteen-year old Laura, who had had aspirations to be a doctor like her father, and she is more conscious of the economic and social fall in their circumstances when their fey and selfish mother turns to Laura to be the breadwinner of the family. At this stage, neither Clare nor her mother are particularly well-rounded characters, Clare (seven years younger than Laura) being merely childish and her mother Stella a languorous, demanding presence who decides to sail back ‘home’ to England, leaving the girls to fend for themselves.
Instead of a medical degree at university, Laura finds herself packed off to business college and a secretarial job at a box factory, owned by Felix Shaw. Although she feels no great attraction to him, when Felix Shaw proposes to her – largely as an economic arrangement – she accepts, seeing it as a means of financial security for herself and her younger sister Clare. Felix offers to support Clare to go to university- a dream that Laura had had for herself- but this promise is soon broken once Laura and Felix are married. I can’t really decide whether Felix is a complex character or a caricature. He almost willfully makes unwise financial business decisions, selling off mildly successful companies to spivs and incompetents, while expecting Laura to pick up a heavier work burden as a result. They are not poor: they live in a large house overlooking Sydney Harbour, and he enjoys driving luxury cars dangerously while abusing everyone else on the road. He sells the house – the one thing that Laura loved- from under her to underline her financial impotence in this dependent relationship.
Harrower skillfully juxtaposes the glittering sunshine of the Harbour, with the darkness of their house. It is as if a shadow lies over this beautiful home and its extensive gardens. The book is set in the 1940’s and 50’s, and although neighbours are aware of the arguments next door, nothing is done to help them. In fact, in spite of living in the midst of other houses and working with other women, Laura and Clare are socially isolated, with Felix’s happiness their main concern.
The term ‘coercive control’ did not exist when Harrower wrote this book, but all the signs are there: the emotional blackmail over the prospect, later withdrawn, of Clare’s university education; the changeability of mood; the oscillation between extravagant generosity and meanness; the rigidity in expectations for the women in his life compared with his own recklessness. Felix is physically violent towards Laura, and the possibility of sexual violence towards her sister Clare lurks in the shadows.
Most insidious of all is Laura’s own coercion of Clare to remain in the family home as a peacemaker and mediator, and her adoption of Felix’s own sense of victimhood as a reason to make her stay. Felix has made his own wife the enforcer. At times Laura dreams of an escape, but faced with the consequences, she represses her own will and becomes an extension of Felix.
Meanwhile, as the novel progresses, Clare becomes the main focus when she resists the narrowing of her own horizons and as all of the colour leaches out of Laura. The arrival of Bernard, a young refugee, to stay in the house to convalesce breaks the spell, even though for a while it seems that he, too, is going to be lured into Felix’s orbit by the promise of academic support, similar to that offered to Clare. In fact, there is a latent thread of repressed homosexuality in most of Felix’s relationships with other men, be they fellow entrepreneurs or employees.
The threat of violence runs through this book and it is clearly felt by Laura and Clare as they scramble to meet Felix’s standards and demands. Knowing, as we do, the physical danger to women at the point where they finally decide to leave a coercive partner, as readers we feel unsafe as Laura, and increasingly, Clare contemplate an escape
The title ‘The Watch Tower’ is interesting, because it can be interpreted in many ways. It has connotations of punishment and incarceration, which the beautiful house on the Harbour becomes. But it also suggests a lookout as well, and as the book progresses Clare is increasingly looking out, to a wider world, even while Laura becomes more deeply entombed in her relationship with Felix.
So, for a book which I thought was going to be rather insipid and old-fashioned, I found a book that in many ways predates Jess Hill’s See What You Made Me Do (my review here). I read this as part of the Ivanhoe Reading Circle’s program, and one of the questions raised was whether we know of another Australian book of similar vintage that deals with the issue of what we now recognize and name as ‘coercive control’. I haven’t read it, but I suspect that Elizabeth von Arnim’s Vera treads similar ground (The Pastor’s Wife (my review here) does too, to a lesser extent. I can see why Michael Heyward at Text Publishing re-published this book. Unfortunately, it reads just as true today – possibly even more true now – as it would have sixty years ago.
My rating: 9/10
Sourced from: Brotherhood Books
Read because: November book selection for Ivanhoe Reading Circle.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 