Peter Edwards

Dr Hudson, who is now editor of historical documents in the Department of Foreign Affairs, has written a very useful study of Australia’s involvement in the League of Nations. A sometime journalist, Hudson has an enviable flair for writing about complex international issues in a manner comprehensive to an undergraduate or to that gentleman beloved of publishers’ blurbs, the intelligent layman. ... (read more)

Well-informed debate on national security, never more important than now, depends on reliable accounts of historical episodes, ones not distorted by latter-day political or diplomatic sensitivities. For more than a century, Australians have benefited from a tradition of official histories of the nation’s involvement in conflicts and peacekeeping operations, for which governments of all persuasio ... (read more)

Not many Australian historians have managed to publish major books, based on years of scholarly research, which have evoked both immediate and enduring acclaim. It therefore says something both about intrinsic value and about the tastes of the book-buying public when such a book goes into a second or even a third edition, ten or more years after its first appearance. The weeks preceding Anzac Day ... (read more)