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Sergeant Humphrey

by
October 2004, no. 265

A New Britannia: Fourth Edition by Humphrey McQueen

UQP, $24.95 pb, 336 pp

Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600)

Social Sketches of Australia: Third Edition by Humphrey McQueen

UQP, $24.95 pb, 430 pp

Sergeant Humphrey

by
October 2004, no. 265

There must be few Australian history books that have run to a fourth edition, and it’s hard to think of any that have provoked as much discussion – and rancour – as Humphrey McQueen’s ‘New Left’ classic A New Britannia. It’s the Sergeant Pepper of Australian historiography: racy, emblematic of its time and place, and full of special effects – the impolite may call some of them recording tricks. Does it still have the capacity to shock the first-time reader, as it did me when I encountered it as an under­graduate in the 1980s? Perhaps, having been bred on so many of the legends to which McQueen laid waste, I was just very shockable. Like a lot of readers, I had never imagined Henry Lawson as a fascist.

A New Britannia: Fourth Edition

A New Britannia: Fourth Edition

by Humphrey McQueen

UQP, $24.95 pb, 336 pp

Social Sketches of Australia: Third Edition

Social Sketches of Australia: Third Edition

by Humphrey McQueen

UQP, $24.95 pb, 430 pp

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