It has a brave title, John Rickard’s Australia: A cultural history, for that adjective ‘cultural’ raises expectations difficult to meet. ‘Culture’, as Raymond Williams has explained, ‘is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.’ After reading the book I cannot help wondering whether the substitution of the word ‘social’ would have made for a more ac ... (read more)
Alan D. Gilbert
Alan D. Gilbert (1944–2010) was an Australian historian and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester. His books include The Making of Post-Christian Britain: A history of the secularization of modern society (1980) and The Idea of a 21st Century University (2004).