The Resident Judge of Port Phillip

Russia If You’re Listening (ABC) Episode 3: Why It’s So Hard to Fight When You Don’t Know Why. The episode starts with Matt Bevan reminding us that the beautiful rich soils of Ukraine turn to mud twice a year, and now that the war is extending to 9 months, the soldiers there will have experienced this phenomenon twice. In fact, they experienced it earlier than they would have because this year the muddy season came early. He tells the story of two men: one Ukrainian and the other Russian. ABC reporter Isabella Higgins met 52 year old “Dad soldier” Taris as he was enlisting in the Ukrainian army from the reserves. The Ukrainian army had been modernizing since 2014, when Russia invaded the Donbass region. The Russian army, on the other hand, was poorly trained, corrupt and poorly provisioned. The second man, Vadim, is a 21 year old Russian boy who lives five days away from Moscow who is now imprisoned for 15 years for war crimes committed when he shot a man on a bicycle. He, and his fellow soldiers, were told that they would only be in Ukraine for three days, and that their mission was to terrorize the Ukrainians and their authorities sufficiently that they would surrender.

Emperors of Rome Episode XV The Assassination of Caligula takes us further in to the strange world of Caligula. Was he mad, or was he just taking the mickey? He certainly seemed to be: he faked a battle with the Germani; sent his troops ‘over the seas’ and got them to bring back shells and seaweed, and later brought his uncle Claudius into public view after his family had kept him away, (perhaps because they were ashamed of him?) Caligula brought back the treason trials with a vengeance, and there were admittedly a lot of plots against him. He was attacked at the theatre and killed, and this time the plot went beyond the Senate to men of different ranks opposed to him. Episode XVI Claudius the Unlikely Emperor sees Caligula’s uncle step into the breach when Caligula is killed, along with his wife and baby daughter (just to make sure that there was no heir lurking around). Claudius does seem to have had some sort of physical disability and a stutter, and Dr Rhiannon Evans suggests gently that perhaps, had he been born to any other family, he might have been exposed at birth. He was a scholar, and was friends with Livy. When Caligula died, the Senate could have reasserted their authority, but they dragged their feet. Claudius didn’t subject Caligula to “Damnatio memoriae” (i.e. expunging his memory) but he didn’t pursue the assassins either. Episode XVII Claudius Conquers Britain (or as Dr Rhiannon Evans prefers, Brittania) celebrates Claudius’ big moment in returning to Brittania for the first time in 100 years. Augustus had been more concerned about stability in the empire, and there was no great hunger for the resources that Britain offered (even though the Romans were happy to take them later). At first Claudius sent Plautius over, but then he himself crossed the Channel, even though he wasn’t particularly well known as a soldier. He got his triumph in Rome after the successful invasion, but even here he showed mercy to Caratacus who led the residence, by allowing him to live in peace in Rome. Episode XVIII The Life of Claudius looks at how Claudius was received by the Romans, once he became emperor. The Senate was ambivalent: they were still a bit piqued that they weren’t consulted about who should follow Caligula. Claudius put their noses further out of joint by bringing Gauls into the Senate, and appointing freedmen (i.e. former slaves) into acting as a sort of ministry with a secretary, treasurer etc. He became involved in the law, forbidding slaveholders from killing or torturing their slaves at will, and famously allowed flatulence. His building activities mainly involved repairing shabby buildings and constructing infrastructure like the Aqua Claudia aqueduct (which still stands). He had four wives, and was criticized for liking being married too much and under his wives’ influence. He had to execute his third wife Messelina because of treason in her affair with the most handsome man in Rome Gaius Silius. He then married his niece Agrippina the younger who possibly murdered him to promote her son Nero. After his death, Claudius was deified, and his 20th century reputation was resuscitated by Robert Graves’ I Claudius.

The History Listen (ABC). Fitzroyalty- a short history of Brunswick Street. This episode looks at the transformation of Brunswick Street Fitzroy during the 1980s and 90s. As a child, I remember Brunswick Street as being rather noisy and rundown. My mum, who used to assiduously note down all the supermarket specials in the paper on a Tuesday, would go to Sims Markette which was either in Smith Street or Brunswick Street. I remember her leaving us in the car while she ‘nicked in’ for a few specials, and the smell of Weetbix or some other cereal and roasted coffee wafting in through the windows. Somehow I don’t think that parents would do that now. And as for when Brunswick Street became cool? I think I must have been off having babies and toddlers at that time and I missed it- although I met my current husband at the Fitz, and I always loved the Brunswick Street Bookstore. But I rarely go there now, because parking is just too hard and as they say in the episode, Brunswick Street is a victim of its own success, being largely just a promenade of coffee shops now.

Conversations (ABC) Niki Savva’s brutal assessment of Scott Morrison. Knowing that she used to work as Peter Costello’s press secretary, I’ve never really trusted Niki Savva, seeing her as a Liberal Party apologist. However, I’m relishing her takedown of Scott Morrison in Bulldozed: Scott Morrison’s Fall and Anthony Albanese’s Rise . As usual, Richard Fidler asks good questions and I feel as if there’s no need for me to read the book (which was probably not Savva’s intention at all!)

History Extra: Desk Killers. I’ve reserved Dan Gretton’s book I You We Them, which examines the psychology of individuals who organised and implemented some of the worst crimes against humanity, from the Holocaust to human rights violations in Nigeria. Actually, all the examples that he gave in this podcast were either from the Holocaust or from a study of the culpability of oil corporations in Nigeria in 1993, when Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed on trumped-up charges by the military government to protect the oil concessions. He notes the light sentences of ‘desk killers’ (a German term) who oversee atrocities compared with the low-level guards who carry them out -for example the law professors who drew up the Nuremberg laws who escaped with very light punishments.

The History Listen (ABC) Hume and Hovell and the Pathfinders. What a pain in the arse William Hovell must have been. Appointed over the young currency-lad Hamilton Hume, he seemed to want nothing more than to turn around and go back home all the time when Hume and Hovell were sent off by Governor Brisbane to chart a route between Sydney and Westernport Bay. I bet the Indigenous groups that helped them along the way came to regret their assistance.

Emperors of Rome Episode XII Tiberius the Gloomiest of Men. Tiberius set himself up over the Capri, where he may or may not have indulged in orgies. He set up Sejanus as his political gate-keeper but the senators resented this as Sejanus was only an equestrian. Tiberius passed strong laws against treason, and Dr Rhiannon Evans likens Rome at this time to East Germany, where neighbours informed on neighbours. When Sejanus had an affair with Livilla (Drusus’ widow) he was accused of treason and summarily executed. When Tiberius died, most people agreed that he was a gloomy character, and he didn’t build much. Episode XIII The Rule of Caligula looks at “Bootikins” as Matt Smith rather endearingly calls him. Caligula’s real name was “Gaius” and he never used the name Caligula (i.e. Little Boots) for himself. He had the best family tree of any of the emperors. He only reigned for 4 years. He was popular at first, spending a lot of money doing everything that Tiberius had not done – but that didn’t last. There is speculation that his cruelty was prompted by a personality change after illness, but the timelines don’t work. Episode XIV The Madness of Caligula. We get most of our information about Caligula from Suetonius, who wrote a biography of him. Caligula broke a number of taboos: he spoke about himself and his sister as gods (thereby breaking the taboo against incest and deification while still alive); he stole statues from Greece; he didn’t respect the senators or elites. He was extravagant, building a bridge direct from his home to the Temple of Jupiter directly over Augustus’ temple. He completely burnt off the residual affection that people may have had towards him on account of being Germanicus’ son.

Start the Week (BBC) Power Plays and Family Dynamics. I hadn’t heard of any of the works discussed in this program, but the topic sounded interesting. The program starts with a quote from Samuel Johnson “if a kingdom be … a great family, a family likewise is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions.” One guest is A. M. Homes, whose most recent book The Unfolding looks at an American ‘patriot’ maddened by Barak Obama’s election, who collects together a band of like-minded men to spread their (Trumpesque) version of the American dream. Another guest is Nick Hytner who is directing a new production of Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman about a disgraced financier while the third guest is historian Simon Sebag Montefiore who has a new book out called The World: A Family History Of Humanity, which looks at world history through the lens of particular families (sounds good, actually). Three very diverse books, and an interesting conversation.

Talking Politics I have just read Tara Westover’s Educated, and in Episode 232 Tara Westover-Educated here she is with David Runciman, who was actually one of her academic mentors. The episode was recorded in March 2020, during the COVID lockdowns and as someone who spent most of her life isolated from ´normal´social life, it made no great change to her life. There is then a replay of an earlier interview that Runciman undertook with his former pupil from February 2018 when her book was just published.

Travels Through Time 1967 The Premonitions Bureau doesn’t go back in time quite so far this episode- only to 1967. The Premonitions Bureau was established at the London Evening Standard Newspaper by psychiatrist and academic John Barker who invited people to call in with their premonitions of disaster, and then matched the predictions against actual events. The experiment only lasted about 18 months. The three days in 1967 selected by Journalist Sam Night, author of The Premonitions Bureau were January 4, when the racing driver Donald Campbell correctly predicted his death in the Bluebird the previous night while playing cards; April 21 when John Barker received a prediction that he was in danger and November 5 when a train accident at Hither Green Railway Station confirmed the prediction of two of the experiment’s most accurate prognosticators, Alan Hencher and Kathleen Middleton. Unfortunately John Barker’s files were lost, and this is the object that Sam Night would most like to bring back to the current day.

Fifteen Minute History (which always goes for longer) Episode 135 Connected Histories of Cuba and the United States features Ada Ferrer, Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University and author of the Pulitzer-prize winning Cuba: An American History. She began writing her book for an American audience when Obama began opening up transit between Cuba and US. She points out that both Cuba and the US have been invested in each other’s wars and revolutions, with slaveholders having an interest in the outcome of the US Civil War, and the Spanish/US war where Cuba was seen as a possible territory (never a state). The US occupied Cuba between 1899-1902 but kept lifting the bar for the criteria of sufficient ‘self government’ for their troops to leave. The Platt Amendment ensured that the US could intervene at will in Cuban politics. As well as politics, her book has personal stories how these political machinations affected the lives of US and Cuban people.

History Hit recorded while Liz Truss was still holding on and hadn´t yet achieved the status of shortest-lived Prime Minister in British History, in Britain’s Worst Prime Minister Dan Snow asks three historians, Tim Bale, Christine Haddon and Robin Eagles, who they think are the worst. Anthony Eden, Edward Heath and the 3rd Earl of Bute contend for first place, but Pitt the Elder, Lord North and Wellington get a guernsey too.

Emperors of Rome Interlude Pax Romana is a short episode where Dr Rhiannon Evans admits that she is no fan of Augustus, who she thinks is a tyrant. “Pax” doesn’t so much mean ‘peace’ as a contract between victor and vanquished at the end of a war. During the 41 years of Augustus’ reign, he closed the Gates of Janus three times – a sign that Rome was at peace- something that had only happened twice in the previous 700 years of Romes’ history. He instigated the Goddess of Augustan Peace which was very sneaky way of getting around the prohibition of making oneself a God during your lifetime. Episode X The Augustan Succession describes Augustus’ search for a successor, which began almost immediately he came to power – not a bad idea when leaders died young. He had no legitimate son, so he married off his daughter Julia instead to possible successors, and then turned to his grandsons. But everyone seemed to die (how curious) so he turned to his stepsons instead, especially Tiberius, Livia’s son. For a long time, Augustus was hailed as a great peace-bringer but Ronald Syme wrote a very critical biography in the 1930s and since then attitudes towards Augustus have veered between the two. Currently historians (like Dr Evans herself) tend to lean towards Syme, although not to the same extreme extent. Episode XI Tiberius the Reluctant Emperor looks at Augustus’ anointed, Livia’s son Tiberius, who was better known as a good general. He had tough gigs in Hungary and Germany for 22 years until Augustus died, and he performed well. Was he reluctant? Well, he was middle-aged by the time he returned to Rome as emperor after years in self-imposed exile in Rhodes. He was hard to read and he didn’t cater to the people as Augustus had done. He was the first in the Julio-Claudian dynasty that became very tangled as different branches (and not so different) married each other. Germanicus was tipped as the next emperor but died in the East, then Drusus died too (killed by his wife, or is that just propaganda?). In 26BC Tiberius left Rome, which he never really liked, for Capri.

Russia if You’re Listening (ABC) Episode 2: Zelensky’s Big Call: Run Away or Stay and Fight. Putin anticipated that the invasion of Ukraine would take three days, but he wasn’t counting on Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy was almost an accidental president. He had been a comedian on popular and populist shows like ‘Hey Hey It’s Saturday’ or ‘The Footy Show’ (did he really play the piano with his penis? Search YouTube) but the big break came with his three-season comedy ‘Servant of the People’ where he played a teacher who ended up becoming president. Life imitated art but he found by the start of 2022 that people preferred him as a comedian rather than a politician. So Putin would have seen him as a weak target but two factors disrupted Putin’s plan. First, the Russian plan was that 3000 paratroopers would take the airport, in readiness for the landing of18 planeloads of Russian soldiers. But the CIA had warned Zelenskyy (who took some convincing)of the impending invasion and the resulting Ukrainian attack meant that the paratroopers could not hold the airport. The second important factor was Zelenskyy’s determination to stay and fight. Zelenskyy speaks three languages: his first is Russian, then Ukrainian then English. In his videos, recorded on his mobile phone, he swaps between the three, depending on the message and the audience. He has framed himself as a symbol of the state: if he stays, the state stays.