Lion & Kangaroo: The Initiation of Australia

· Xoum Publishing
5.0
1 review
Ebook
320
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

Lion & Kangaroo is one of Australia’s great works of history, a rich chronicle of the nation’s coming-of-age.

With intelligence, wisdom and wit, acclaimed historian Gavin Souter captures all the milestones of Australia’s first decades, from the constitutional conventions of the nineteenth century to the turbulent years that followed World War I. Painting unforgettable portraits of scores of the most fascinating participants, he traces a national character in evolution.

First published in 1976 and rereleased digitally by Xoum for the first time, Lion & Kangaroo is both profound and insightful. It is impossible to comprehend contemporary Australia without first reading it.

Reviews of Lion & Kangaroo

‘Souter is a writer of great distinction … This book is the work of a man who can impose on the chaos of the past an order that lifts the work into the realms of art without doing violence to the events or sacrificing the standards of scholarship as defined by the academics. It is a great achievement.’ Manning Clark

‘A superb evocation of Australian life in the years between federation and the First World War, showing how imperial sentiment dominated our lives and left a vacuum in Australia’s national identity … Souter’s book is beautifully written, lucid, witty and compelling.’ Gough Whitlam

‘Souter has written a masterpiece … The book, assiduously researched for its making, is materially explosive … Souter lets the material do its own erupting, then shapes it to his magnificent control. A mighty work of history.’ The Courier-Mail

Ratings and reviews

5.0
1 review
A Google user
October 1, 2017
Good book.
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About the author

Gavin Souter AO was born in 1929 in Sydney. He was educated at Kempsey High School and Scots College in Warwick, Queensland, before graduating BA from the University of Sydney. He joined The Sydney Morning Herald as a journalist in 1947 and worked there for 40 years, serving as a correspondent in New York and London and later as an Assistant Editor of the newspaper.

He is the author of eleven works of non-fiction, including A Peculiar People, The Australians in Paraguay (1968), which won the Foundation of Australian Literary Studies award; Lion & Kangaroo, The Initiation of Australia 1901–1919 (1976); Company of Heralds (1981), which also won the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies award; and Heralds and Angels, the House of Fairfax 1841–1990 (1992), which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award.

Gavin was Vice President of the Australian Society of Authors between 1975 and 1978 and Deputy Chairman of the Commonwealth Films Board of Review between 1981 and 1984.

In 1960, he won the W.G. Walkley Award for Australian Journalism; in 1988 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM), and raised to Officer level (AO) in 1995; and in 2001 he was awarded the Centenary Medal.

Gavin lives with his wife in Sydney.

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