Nicholas Brown

Nicholas Brown is a professor in the School of History, ANU, with research interests encompassing Australian history, with a particular focus on twentieth-century social, environmental, and biographical history, and on historical perspectives on public policy development and processes. His most recent book is A History of Canberra (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Nicholas Brown reviews 'The Governors of New South Wales 1788–2010' edited by David Clune and Ken Turner

March 2010, no. 319 • 01 March 2010

A couple of anniversaries explain the occasion of this collection: one hundred and fifty years of responsible government in New South Wales, and the bicentenary of Lachlan Macquarie’s arrival as the governor who, Brian Fletcher argues, has had the most ‘persistent hold over public consciousness’ in reflecting the ambiguities of a convict colony. The volume is framed by Rod Cavalier’s forew ... (read more)

Nicholas Brown reviews ‘I Wonder’: The life and work of Ken Inglis' edited by Peter Browne and Seumas Spark

May 2020, no. 421 • 27 April 2020

I am ashamed to recall that when our high-school history class in the late 1970s was set K.S. Inglis’s The Australian Colonists (1974), I – and I don’t think I was alone – didn’t quite know what to do with a text that focused on ‘ceremonies, monuments and rhetoric’, one that began as a study on 26 January 1788 but worked back as an historical enquiry from 25 April 1915. Inglis decla ... (read more)