Anne Watson

The Poisoned Chalice: Peter Hall and the Sydney Opera House by Anne Watson

November 2017, no. 396

Researching Australia’s most iconic building and writing about its beleaguered history from the time Jørn Utzon resigned in 1966 until it opened in 1973 might result in an indigestible plot for many of the building’s enthusiasts. Yet narrating the fraught circumstances behind the completion of the Sydney Opera House by Australian ...

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Building a Masterpiece: The Sydney Opera House edited by Anne Watson

by Sylvia Lawson •

December 2006–January 2007, no. 287

Sylvia Lawson reviews 'Building a Masterpiece: The Sydney Opera House' edited by Anne Watson

Don’t be fooled by this book’s splendid appearance; it’s not to be left on the coffee table. It is an excellent compendium of cultural, political and social history, complementing Philip Drew’s The Masterpiece (2001) and Françoise Fromonot’s superb study, Joern Utzon et l’Opéra de Sydney (1998). It also establishes Anne Watson as a distinguished historian, both in her own contributions and in her orchestration of others. She has understood that there can be many sides to such a story; the way politics and culture have been entangled in this building’s history gives rise to questions worth unpacking indefinitely.

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A Cedar Heritage

by Anne Watson •

August 2004, no. 263

For a timber of such beauty and usefulness, red cedar has had a somewhat perverse history. Recognised for its domestic potential in the first few years of European settlement in New South Wales, it wasn’t long before supplies were so depleted around Sydney that government attempted, unsuccessfully, to regulate its logging. By the end of the century, it was all but cut out of accessible land from Sydney to north Queensland, leaving in its wake large tracts of denuded rainforest and sometimes dislocated Aboriginal communities.

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