David Garrioch
David Garrioch is Professor of History at Monash University, where he has taught environmental history, the history of slavery, of the Enlightenment and French Revolution, and of the modern nation. His books include The Making of Revolutionary Paris (2002) and The Huguenots of Paris and the Coming of Religious Freedom (2014). His work on urban society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries looks at religion, labour practices, family relationships, class formation, policing, and the history of sound. He is currently working on fire in European cities, from the late Middle Ages to the mid nineteenth century.
Long hair flowing around his face, he grasps his sword firmly in one hand, the regimental banner held high in the other as he strides purposefully onto the bridge, leading his men to victory. It is one of the most familiar portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte, immortalised by the painter Antoine-Jean Gros: an image of courage, of leadership, of calm determination. And it is not quite what happened. The ... (read more)
If the past is a foreign country, the distant past is a very foreign one indeed. Tim Flannery’s new book takes us deep into the prehistory of Europe. Climbing aboard the time machine that he repeatedly invites us to use, we glimpse pygmy dinosaurs and terrifying terminator pigs the size of cows. We meet, on the island of Gargano in what is now southern Italy, a giant carnivorous hedgehog. Later, ... (read more)