In 1922, at the height of Ireland's tragic civil war, Irish Jesuit William Hackett was transferred to Australia by his order Assigned to a minor teaching post, this seemingly unremarkable newcomer caused no stir. Yet Father Hackett had been close to the centre of the provisional Irish Republic's struggle for independence from Britain; part of the network of Irish nationalists who carried intelligence, ministered to republican troops, spoke on republican platforms, and helped to publicise British injustices and atrocities in Ireland. Now, he was effectively an exile. A major figure in the biography, Archbishop Daniel Mannix is seen for the first time in close-up, through Hackett's privileged insight into the private self of the famously aloof and powerful prelate.
Australia’s leading biographer Brenda Niall, now in her nineties, turns the spotlight on her own story in this fascinating memoir of a remarkable life and career
In 1938, Sir James Gobbo's family emigrated from Cittadella, near Venice, to Melbourne. After Oxford University, he returned to Melbourne to pursue a successful career as a barrister and then a judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria. He then became governor of Victoria in 1997. Also traces his major roles in immigration reform.
This book is an examination and evaluation from a historical perspective of the alliance that was established and forged between the former Taoiseach and President of Ireland, Eamon de Valera, and the former President of Maynooth and Archbishop of Melbourne, Australia, Dr Daniel Mannix. The book will examine how the alliance between the two men played a pivotal role in Ireland’s push for independence. The Archbishop’s role is used as a symbol of the vast Irish diaspora worldwide and how their support, both financially and physically through demonstrations for Ireland, helped keep the push for autonomy alive. Having examined the role the Archbishop played in his alliance with de Valera and the clergy, the book appraises how Dr Mannix, so revered at one stage in Irish society, became such an isolated figure after 1925. Irish history has largely neglected the role of the Archbishop. This historical analysis, grounded in research of both primary and secondary sources including previously undocumented oral evidence, archival papers, written public and private correspondence between the two characters and visual sources, will help to replenish his role.
Edward Cahill SJ was a well-known and influential figure in Ireland during the early decades of the new Irish state. As Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Sociology at the Jesuit House of Studies in Dublin, his research led him to view liberalism as the great enemy of the faith and spiritual values of the majority of the Irish people. He identified with liberalism the exclusion of God from public life and a strong emphasis on secularism, and also the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism. He sought to counter this by teaching a Christian sociology based on the papal social encyclicals. Cahill gathered around him a lay organisation of men and women drawn from all walks of life, known as An Ríoghacht, which became influential in the 1930s. Mr and Mrs de Valera were good friends of Cahill and shared many of his views. His magnum opus, widely read at the time, was entitled The Framework of a Christian State.
B.A. Santamaria was one of the most controversial Australians of our time. An ardent anti-Communist and devout Catholic, he was fiercely intelligent and a natural leader, polarising the community into loyal followers and committed opponents. In the 1940s Santamaria created the anti-Communist organisation 'The Movement'. In the 1950s he was a key figure in the tumultuous split of the Australian Labor Party. He subsequently enjoyed great influence as a public commentator on his television program Point of View and in his weekly column in The Australian. Santamaria had a strong social conscience and spent much of his time helping the underprivileged. Although he began as an advocate and champion of the Catholic Church, he spent much of his last decades opposing some of its activities. Published for the 100th anniversary of Santamaria’s birth, Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man is an authoritative biography from Gerard Henderson, a close colleague until a disagreement saw the two men estranged and never reconciled.
Winner of the 2016 Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal and the National Biography Award. Daniel Mannix, Archbishop of Melbourne from 1917 until his death, aged ninety-nine, in 1963, was a towering figure in Melbourne's Catholic community. But his political interventions had a profound effect on the wider Australian nation too. Award-winning biographer Brenda Niall has made some unexpected discoveries in Irish and Australian archives which overturn some widely held views. She also draws on her own memories of meeting and interviewing Mannix to get to the essence of this man of contradictions, controversies and mystery. Mannix is not only an astonishing new look at a remarkable life, but a fascinating depiction of Melbourne in the first half last century. Brenda Niall is one of Australia’s foremost biographers. She is the author of five award-winning biographies, including her acclaimed accounts of the Boyd family. In 2016 she won the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal and the National Biography Award for Mannix. Brenda has degrees from the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University and Monash University. In 2004 she was awarded the Order of Australia for ‘services to Australian literature, as an academic, biographer and literary critic’. She frequently reviews for the Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Book Review. ‘For readers interested in the political and cultural life of Australia during the first half of the 20th century, Niall’s highly readable biography will reward handsomely.’ Books & Publishing ‘With characteristic insight, sensitivity, and tact, Niall confirms that Daniel Mannix is a major, if elusive, figure in the modern history of Australia, Ireland, and the Catholic Church...a balanced and convincing account of Mannix’s life and times.’ Australian Book Review ‘Brenda Niall’s central challenge was to uncover the personal face of Mannix from his public speeches...She does this modestly and penetratingly.’ Catholic News ‘This is the best life of Mannix we have...Writing from inside the Melbourne Catholic experience, Brenda Niall shows how people’s affection for Mannix muted their criticisms of him—even if they knew better.’ Global Pulse ‘I should say that I expected to take my time over this biography, as I usually do, reading a chapter every other day. But not so, I could not put it down.’ ANZ LitLovers ‘For my money, Brenda Niall’s Mannix is the most wise, shrewd and elegant biography yet produced of this complex and beguiling man. Niall’s irresistible prose strengthens the candour of this fine book.’ Age ‘Calmly magisterial...Niall gives a sense of Mannix’s greatness and of why we can still be awed by him.’ Australian ‘An extraordinary man and an extraordinary book.’ Weekly Times ‘Among living Australian biographers, only Philip Ayres matches Brenda Niall for painstaking research serving narratives at once spirited and judicious.’ Spectator ‘This book is the work of a master of the art of biography...Gripping.’ Irish Echo ‘A fond and fluent life of Mannix that captures the crispness and the passion, the humour and the enigma of the man who meddled with politics like a master magician.’ Sydney Review of Books ‘[Niall] has written a generous and penetrating biography.’ Madonna Magazine
Volume 19 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) contains concise biographies of individuals who died between 1991 and 1995. The first of two volumes for the 1990s, it presents a colourful montage of late twentieth-century Australian life, containing the biographies of significant and representative Australians. The volume is still in the shadow of World War II with servicemen and women who enlisted young appearing, but these influences are dimming and there are now increasing numbers of non-white, non-male, non-privileged and non-straight subjects. The 680 individuals recorded in volume 19 of the ADB include Wiradjuri midwife and Ngunnawal Elder Violet Bulger; Aboriginal rights activist, poet, playwright and artist Kevin Gilbert; and Torres Strait Islander community leader and land rights campaigner Eddie Mabo. HIV/AIDS child activists Tony Lovegrove and Eve Van Grafhorst have entries, as does conductor Stuart Challender, ‘the first Australian celebrity to go public’ about his HIV/AIDS condition in 1991. The arts are, as always, well-represented, including writers Frank Hardy, Mary Durack and Nene Gare, actors Frank Thring and Leonard Teale and arts patron Ian Potter. We are beginning to see the effects of the steep rise in postwar immigration flow through to the ADB. Artist Joseph Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski was born in Poland. Pilar Moreno de Otaegui, co-founded the Spanish Club of Sydney. Chinese restaurateur and community leader Ming Poon (Dick) Low migrated to Victoria in 1953. Often we have a dearth of information about the domestic lives of our subjects; politician Olive Zakharov, however, bravely disclosed at the Victorian launch of the federal government’s campaign to Stop Violence Against Women in 1993 that she was a survivor of domestic violence in her second marriage. Take a dip into the many fascinating lives of the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
In Crossings and Dwellings, Kyle Roberts and Stephen Schloesser, S.J., bring together essays by eighteen scholars in one of the first volumes to explore the work and experiences of Jesuits and their women religious collaborators in North America over two centuries following the Jesuit Restoration. Long dismissed as anti-liberal, anti-nationalist, and ultramontanist, restored Jesuits and their women religious collaborators are revealed to provide a useful prism for looking at some of the most important topics in modern history: immigration, nativism, urbanization, imperialism, secularization, anti-modernization, racism, feminism, and sexual reproduction. Approaching this broad range of topics from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, this volume provides a valuable contribution to an understudied period.
What will the future of work, social freedom, and employment look like? In an era of increased job insecurity and social dislocation, is it possible to reshape economics along democratic lines in a way that genuinely serves the interests of the community? Of Labour and Liberty arises from Race Mathews’s half-century and more of political and public policy involvement. It responds to evidence of a precipitous decline in active citizenship, resulting from a loss of confidence in politics, politicians, parties, and parliamentary democracy; the rise of "lying for hire" lobbyism; increasing concentration of capital in the hands of a wealthy few; and corporate wrongdoing and criminality. It also questions whether political democracy can survive indefinitely in the absence of economic democracy—of labor hiring capital rather than capital labor. It highlights the potential of the social teachings of the Catholic Church and the now largely forgotten Distributist political philosophy and program that originated from them as a means of bringing about a more equal, just, and genuinely democratic social order. It describes and evaluates Australian attempts to give effect to Distributism, with special reference to Victoria. And with an optimistic view to future possibilities it documents the support and advocacy of Pope Francis, and ownership by some 83,000 workers of the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain. This book will interest scholars and students of Catholic social teaching, history, economics, industrial relations, and business and management.
