D-Day Girls – The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II by Sarah Rose Sphere 2018 ISBN: 9780451495082 RRP $49.99 (hb) Les Parisiennes - How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s By Anne Sebba Orion Publishing Company 2016 ISBN10 0297870971 [...]
King of the Air - The Turbulent Life of Charles Kingsford Smith by Ann Blainey Black Ink, December 2018 ISBN: 9781760641078 RRP $49.99 (hb) Reviewed by Anne Henderson Students and fans of Australia’s greatest pioneering aviator, Charles Kingsford Smith, should be thankful that historian and biographer Ann Blainey chose to spend her recent years researching the [...]
Condé Nast, The Man and his Empire by Susan Ronald, St Martin’s Press, 2019 ISBN: 9781250180025 RRP $44.99 Reviewed by Shelley Gare Condé Nast, the New York magazine mogul who gave us Vogue, Vanity Fair, House & Garden and Glamour, elite titles that dominated the twentieth century, was sometimes a tightwad “in true millionaire tradition” [...]
The Mannix Era: Melbourne Catholic Leadership 1920-1970 by Patrick Morgan Publisher: Connor Court Publishing Pty Ltd, 2018 ISBN: 9781925826166 RRP: $29.95 Reviewed by Paul Henderson Patrick Morgan’s book is a sequel to his book entitled Melbourne Before Mannix. Indeed, in the preface of The Mannix Era he goes back and mentions some of the interesting issues [...]
Robert Graves – From Great War Poet to Good-Bye To All That 1895-1929 by Jean Moorcroft Wilson Bloomsbury Continuum 2018 ISBN: 9781472929167 RRP $50 (hb) Reviewed by Anne Henderson All famous artists have not so famous beginnings. But we look back on them from their peak in recalling their lives. So it is pertinent that, [...]
Before Wallis – Edward VIII’s Other Women by Rachel Trethewey The History Press 2018 ISBN: 9780750985604 RRP $49.99 (hb) Reviewed by Anne Henderson Imagine our contemporary world of social media and paparazzi at the time of Britain’s aristocratic Bright Young Things in the 1920s and 1930s. What gossip might have emerged. What sensational headlines might [...]
Before I Forget – Geoffrey Blainey Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 2019 ISBN: 9781760890339 RRP: $45 Reviewed by Ross Fitzgerald As the Kenny Rogers country song says, you’ve got to know when to hold them and when to fold them. Here Rogers is talking about playing cards as a metaphor for life. Historian and author Geoffrey Blainey certainly [...]
Reasonable Doubt: Spies, Police and the Croatian Six Author: Hamish McDonald Publisher: Doosa Press, 2019 ISBN: 978 0 646 99896 - 1 RRP: $30 Reviewed by Gerard Henderson Anyone who believes that the police, prosecutors, juries and judges always get it right would be well advised to read journalist Hamish McDonald’s Reasonable Doubt. Likewise those [...]
Kindred – A Cradle Mountain Love Story by Kate Legge The Miegunyah Press 2019 ISBN:9780522874518 RRP $44.99 (hb) Reviewed by Anne Henderson The cover of Kate Legge’s Kindred – A Cradle Mountain Love Story, says it all. Two figures in the black and white photography of the early twentieth century stand in a snow covered [...]
Contesting Catholic Identity: The Foundation of Newman College, Melbourne 1914-18 Author: Michael Francis Publisher: Newman College, 2018 ISBN: 978 0 646 98201 4 RRP: $22 Reviewed by Gerard Henderson Palm Sunday 1918 was a big day in the history of the Catholic Church in Victoria. Some 3,000 men and women attended morning Mass at [...]
