Afternoon Light

Summer Series 2025-6 Part 1: Martin Farr, Josh Woodward, & David Lee

In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2025 conference entitled ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nation’. This first episode features the keynote address delivered by Martin Farr, Josh Woodward's paper 'Enlarged horizons and excited imagination: Rereading Robert Menzies’s 1935 overseas diary', & David Lee's paper 'Menzies and Imperial Unity, 1934–1942'.
Martin Farr teaches contemporary history at Newcastle University (UK). His research interests centre on British politics and public life, foreign policy, and foreign relations. He has published on politics and strategy in the two world wars, political life-writing, US-UK relations, tourism, and popular culture. He is currently writing Margaret Thatcher’s World, an international history of Thatcherism. He heads Britain and the World, with its annual conference, book series, and peer-reviewed journal.
Joshua Woodward is an Australian environmental historian whose research explores representations of nature in tourist advertising. He has published several articles on the tourist promotion of Australian national parks and their emergence as important sites of the settler-nation. He completed his Masters at the University of Western Australia, where he was the 2019 recipient of the Frank Broeze scholarship. Josh will complete his PhD on twentieth century Australian tourist advertising at the Australian National University in 2025.
David Lee is an Associate Professor in history in the University of New South Wales, Canberra. He has published widely on Australian history in the twentieth century. His most recent books are Australia and the World: International Relations and Global Events since Federation (Circa, 2022) and John Curtin (Connor Court, 2022). He is also author of The Second Rush: Mining and the Transformation of Australia (Connor Court, 2016) and Stanley Melbourne Bruce: Australian Internationalist (Bloomsbury, 2010). He is Chair of the Commonwealth Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and Cabinet Historian of the National Archives of Australia. Current projects are a history of the Australian Department of Trade and its Antecedent Agencies, 1941–87; a history of Australian independence; Governance During the Howard Era, 1996–2007; a biography of JB Chifley; and an edited volume, Conduits of War: Dominion Governors and Governors-General during the Great War.
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Andrew Kemp ranking our best & worst PMs by term: "It's Whack-a-mole"

Robert Menzies served 18 years as PM, but were they all as good as each other?
On this week’s Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with Andrew Kemp, who has recently ranked Australian Prime Ministers by the best and worst terms of government we have experienced. A fun and enlightening exercise that highlights how good governance can be judged not merely on the policy programs for which governments are elected, but ultimately on rising to the unique & unforeseeable challenges of the day.
Andrew Kemp is a Melbourne-based writer and a former economist at the Commonwealth Treasury and the Department of Treasury and Finance in Victoria. He has written for the Australian Financial Review, The Australian, contributed a chapter to Unity in Autonomy: A Federal History of the Founding of the Liberal Party, and recently launched an Australian history themed Substack titled ‘Australia Past and Present’.
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Matthew Bailey on the Rise of the Australian Shopping Centre: "A Triumph of Consumer Capitalism"

How did the shopping centre become a ubiquitous part of Australian life & is its retail and cultural hegemony greater here than anywhere else on the planet?
On this week's Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with retail historian Matthew Bailey to reveal the fascinating stories associated with the rise of the Australian Shopping Centre. An outgrowth of Menzies-era prosperity, automobility and suburban growth that we not only made our own, but which, through the likes of Westfield, we then began exporting to the world.
Dr Matthew Bailey is an Associate Professor at Macquarie University and one of Australia’s leading retail historians. His book, Managing the Marketplace: Reinventing Shopping Centres in Post-War Australia (Routledge, 2020) is the first book on the subject, and one of the few to comprehensively examine Australian retail history. Dr Bailey has published widely on retail and retail property history, including in leading international and Australian journals such as Urban History, Enterprise & Society, Australian Economic History Review, Journal of Australian Studies, History Australia, and the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing.
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Roland Perry on Australia's Nuclear Genius Mark Oliphant: "I wanted to scream on the steps"

Was an Aussie more essential to the development of the Atom bomb than J. Robert Oppenheimer, & if so why don't we remember him?
On this week's Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with Roland Perry to reveal the remarkable story of Mark Oliphant. A man who arguably won the Second World War twice: first by developing radar to stave off the Nazis, and then by developing the bomb that knocked out Japan. Perhaps the most amazing part of the story is that he is not a household name - reflecting Australia's own discomfort with the destructive power that Oliphant helped to unleash upon the world.
Roland Perry OAM is one of Australia’s best-known authors whose books have sold more than two million copies. He has published 40 books, many of them bestsellers, including Bill the Bastard, Horrie the War Dog, The Australian Light Horse, The Changi Brownlow, Monash & Chauvel, and Anzac Sniper. His latest book is Oliphant: The Australian genius who developed radar and showed Oppenheimer how to build the bomb.
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Stuart Ward on Australia's formerly pervasive British identity: "The cement of Australia's civic culture"

What did it mean when Australians used to boast that we were 'more British than the British'?
On this week's Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with Stuart Ward to discuss the complexities of British identity, as it once held sway across Australia and the broader British Empire. A defining yet evasive term that meant many different things to many different people, and perhaps because of this, has proven very difficult to replace.
Stuart Ward is the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair in Australian Studies at Harvard University for the 2025-26 academic year. He was previously Professor and Head of the Saxo Institute for History, Ethnology, Archaeology and Classics at the University of Copenhagen, specialising in imperial history, particularly the political and social consequences of decolonisation. He is the author inter alia of Australia and the British Embrace: The Demise of the Imperial Ideal, Unknown Nation: Australia After Empire (with James Curran), and Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (recently re-released as a paperback).
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David Day on Labor icon Ben Chifley: "It seems in hindsight extraordinary"

How did a PM who only ever won one election become as iconic as Ben Chifley?
On this week's Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with David Day to discuss Australia's 16th PM. The pipe smoking Bathurst train driver who suffered a trade unionist's martyrdom, before rising to become the architect of Australia's post war settlement. An endearing pragmatist respected even by his opponents, who ironically came unstuck in attempting to push beyond the welfare state towards fully fledged state socialism.
David Day is an Australian historian and author. Day has written widely on Australian history and the history of the Second World War. Among his many books are Menzies and Churchill at War and a two volume study of Anglo-Australian relations during the Second World War. His prize-winning history of Australia, Claiming a Continent, won the prestigious non-fiction prize in the 1998 South Australian Festival Awards for Literature. An earlier book, Smugglers and Sailors, was shortlisted by the Fellowship of Australian Writers for its Book of the Year Award. John Curtin: A Life was shortlisted for the 2000 NSW Premier's Literary Awards' Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction. He is the author of Andrew Fisher: Prime Minister of Australia and Chifley: A Life.
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Troy Bramston on his new biography of Gough Whitlam: "We know about the legacy"

Did Gough Whitlam crash through or simply crash?
On this week's Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with Troy Bramston about his new book, Gough Whitlam: The Vista of the New. The first full length biography of the iconic Labor PM since his passing in 2014, and one replete with lessons for Australia's present generation of political leaders.
Troy Bramston is a senior writer and columnist with The Australian newspaper. His critically acclaimed book, Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics (2019), is the only full-length biography of Australia’s longest-serving prime minister published in the past 20 years. Troy wrote the introduction to the official guide to Robert Menzies’ papers published by the National Archives of Australia in 2021. He is the best-selling and award-winning author or editor of 11 books in total, including Bob Hawke: Demons and Destiny (2022), Paul Keating: The Big-Picture Leader (2016), and most recently Gough Whitlam: The Vista of the New (2025). Troy won the Australian Book Industry Award for The Dismissal (2015) co-authored with Paul Kelly.
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Julian Leeser & Damien Freeman on the poetry of R.G. Menzies: "Part of our shared inheritance"

How did Robert Menzies develop his skillful way with words?
On this week's Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with Julian Leeser & Damien Freeman about the new book Fancies I Dare Not Speak: The Hidden Verse of R.G. Menzies. Revealing how poetry helped to shape the young Menzies, Australian culture, and our nation's quest to understand who we are.
Julian Leeser is the Shadow Minister for Education and Early Learning and for the Arts, and Federal Member for Berowra.
Dr Damien Freeman is a philosopher, lawyer, and Fellow of the Robert Menzies Institute, who wrote the introduction to the book.
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Charles Moore on Margaret Thatcher's Life, Legacy & 100th Birthday: "Almost Revolutionary Fervour"

What did the Iron Lady have in common with Pig Iron Bob?
On this week's Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with Margaret Thatcher's official biographer Charles Moore to explore her life and legacy on the centenary of her birth. Revealing how the grocer's daughter from Lincolnshire drew inspiration from the shopkeeper's son from Jeparit, in her trailblazing quest to reinvigorate Britain and defeat global communism.
Charles Moore joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph in 1979, and as a political columnist in the 1980s covered several years of Mrs Thatcher's first and second governments. He was Editor of The Spectator 1984-1990; Editor of the Sunday Telegraph 1992-1995; and Editor of the Daily Telegraph 1995-2003, for which he is still a regular columnist. He was created Lord Moore of Etchingham in 2020. He is the author of the three-volume authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher, which has recently been re-released in a single-volume centenary edition.
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Toby Young on the Current Battle for Freedom of Speech: "A Very Chilling Effect"

Why are we so quick to try to censor opinions with which we disagree?
On this week's Afternoon Light Georgina Downer speaks with Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, to discuss the current fight for free debate across the Anglosphere. Giving insights into his own experience of being 'cancelled', the massive legislative encroachment on free expression, and what the FSU is doing to protect those who have been brave enough to openly speak their minds.
Lord Young of Acton is the Founder and General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, co-founder of the West London Free School, and co-founder of the Knowledge Schools Trust. He is an associate editor of The Spectator, The Critic, and editor-in-chief of The Daily Sceptic. He was made a Conservative peer in 2024.
The Free Speech Union is a non-partisan, mass membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members and campaigns for free speech more widely. It champions the right of people from all walks of life to express themselves without fear of punishment or persecution. It defends its members who get into trouble for exercising their right to lawful free speech, whether in the workplace, at university or on social media.
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