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John Rickard

John Rickard

John Rickard is the author of Australia: A Cultural History (2017). In his youth he worked as an actor and singer.

John Rickard reviews 'Why Acting Matters' by David Thomson and 'Great Shakespeare Actors' by Stanley Wells

August 2015, no. 373 30 July 2015
Why Acting Matters has on its cover the face of an ape; well, actually it’s Andy Serkis playing Caesar, ‘the top ape’ in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014). The point of this rather unexpected image from a movie not discussed in the book is, the blurb tells us, that ‘acting is baked into our primate DNA’. These two books, however, by elder statesmen in their respective fields, are con ... (read more)

John Rickard reviews 'My Old Man: A personal history of music hall' by John Major

November 2013, no. 356 31 October 2013
Many years ago, when I was struggling to make a living as an actor–singer in England, I spent six months in the chorus at the London Palladium, in a show breezily titled Let Yourself Go, whose star was former Goon Harry Secombe. It was hard work: two performances nightly, plus a matinee on Saturday. Years later, I realised that this demanding regimen was inherited from the days of music hall, wh ... (read more)

John Rickard reviews 'A Wild History: Life and death on the Victoria River frontier' by Darrell Lewis

September 2012, no. 344 28 August 2012
Darrell Lewis first encountered the Victoria River District of the Northern Territory in 1971 when he worked as a field assistant for the Bureau of Mineral Resources. ‘There was an aura about the country which fired my imagination,’ he writes. Since then, as an historian and archaeologist, he has become an authority on the Victoria River District, the land, its history, and its rock art. Now a ... (read more)

John Rickard reviews 'Race and the Modern Exotic: Three "Australian" women on global display' by Angela Woollacott

April 2012, no. 340 01 April 2012
Annette Kellerman, described by Angela Woollacott as ‘swimmer, diver, vaudeville performer, lecturer, writer and a silent-film star’, has been rediscovered in recent years. In 1994 Sydney’s Marrickville Council renamed its Enmore Park Swimming Pool, upgrading it from a humble pool to the Annette Kellerman Aquatic Centre, in honour of the international celebrity, who briefly lived in the neig ... (read more)

Summer of the Seventeenth Doll | Melbourne Theatre Company

March 2012, no. 339 01 March 2012
I first saw Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1957 in London, of all places. I remember feeling some pride in seeing the symbolic kewpie doll presiding over the New Theatre in the heart of the West End. June Jago’s performance as Olive has stayed with me over the years; Philip Hope-Wallace, the Guardian reviewer, described her as ‘all chin and elbows, but as genuine a dramatic actress as you c ... (read more)

The fifty-seventh summer of Ray Lawler’s great play

February 2012, no. 338 01 February 2012
I first saw Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1957 in London, of all places. I remember feeling some pride in seeing the symbolic kewpie doll presiding over the New Theatre in the heart of the West End. June Jago’s performance as Olive has stayed with me over the years; Philip Hope-Wallace, the Guardian reviewer, described her as ‘all chin and elbows, but as genuine a dramatic actress as you c ... (read more)

John Rickard reviews '1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia' by James Boyce

July–August 2011, no. 333 29 June 2011
The title of this book might, to an innocent observer, suggest a triumphalist history, an impression that could be reinforced by the preface, which argues that the setting up of a squatters’ camp on the banks of the Yarra in 1835 ‘had a significance far beyond the baptism of a great city’, and concludes with the remarkable declaration that ‘in this place, at this time, “Australia” was ... (read more)

John Rickard reviews 'Savage or Civilised? Manners in Colonial Australia' by Penny Russell

February 2011, no. 328 04 May 2011
Lacking a titled aristocracy and the leisured class that went with it, Australian colonial society encouraged an egalitarianism of manners. This, however, did not reflect the absence of social stratification: rather, as it has been argued, it was a means of being reconciled to it in a new setting. Nor did it mean, as Penny Russell demonstrates in Savage or Civilised?, that there were not many who ... (read more)

John Rickard reviews 'Not Dark Yet' by David Walker

April 2011, no. 330 24 March 2011
It is perhaps not surprising that historians, as they edge towards retirement, should consider the possibility of reviewing their own life history. So, for example, among the generation of postwar historians, Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Bernard Smith added powerful stories to our stock of Australian childhoods, while W.K. Hancock and Manning Clark, managing two volumes apiece, focused more on the lif ... (read more)
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