La femme de ménage voit tout

Freida McFadden

Description

Volume 16 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography is the last of four volumes to deal with the period 1940-1980, recording the lives of Australians whom many of us remember from the recent past.

Maintaining the ADB's tradition of scholarship, Volume 16 reflects what changed and what remained constant in Australian society in the years of World War II and its aftermath.

Viscount Slim, Archbishop Geoffrey Sambell, Sir Arthur Rylah, Dame Ivy Wedgwood and 'Eddie' Ward, Sir John Storey and Sir Arthur Warner, Sir Thomas and Lady (Vera Deakin) White, Sir Sydney Rowell, Annie Sage, Rohan Rivett and 'Chester' Wilmot, Kenneth Slessor, Danila Vassilieff, Loudon Sainthill, Alison Rehfisch, Christian Waller, Edna Walling, Lorna Stirling and Robert Tudawali, Sir Frederick Shedden, Sir Frederick and Lady Schonell, Sir Samuel Wadham, Sir Stephen Roberts, Sir Grenfell Price, Camilla Wedgwood and Theodor Strehlow, Jessie Street, 'Lance' Sharkey, Kathleen Syme, Sir William Upjohn, Jean White-Haney and Julia Rapke, George Wallace junior, Oscar Seppelt and Jimmy Watson, Murray Beresford Roberts and Ronald Ryan: from governors-general, archbishops, politicians and military leaders to con-men and criminals, there are 673 lives (written by 569 authors) in this volume.

Like the pieces of a mosaic, a host of lives gives a picture of our society and provides insights into the experiences of our people. While biography necessarily focuses on the individual, a range of biographies illuminates large themes in Australia's recent history, themes such as immigration, accelerating industrialization, urbanization and suburbanization, war (World War II, Korea, Malaya and Vietnam), material progress, increasing cultural maturity, conservative and radical politics, conflict and harmony, and the loss of isolation and innocence. It also reveals something of the greatness and the littleness of which human beings are capable.

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