No. 1

Sicily in the twelfth century, under the reign of Roger II (1130–54 AD), was a place of cultural and religious exchange. Appreciation for Arabic, Byzantine and Latin art and architecture ran deep within the society, encouraging cultural and linguistic interaction between different groups of people and ways of life.The Tombstone of Anne (see Figure 1),... Read more

It is a mark of the limiting character of a purely national perspective that it has been so rarely noticed that two English-speaking democracies of the 1980s each had a former trade union official as its national leader. Bob Hawke, Australian Labor Party (ALP) prime minister, was a former president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU);... Read more

One hundred years ago last week, an obscure Russian named Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov directed a seizure of power in the Russian capital of St Petersburg. Ulyanov was a professional revolutionary, better known as Lenin (because he had been exiled in Siberia, close to the Lena river), and was living in Switzerland in April 1917 when Germany took him back to his homeland to foment discord there.... Read more

Adelaide, 1980. Reverberations of electrified reggae rock shake the concrete pillars supporting the Port Adelaide Town Hall. The iconoclastic Aboriginal Australian band—No Fixed Address—are performing their powerful, politically charged anthem We Have Survived, bringing Aboriginal political issues, literally, to the centre stage. Inspired by the black-celebration messages of Bob Marley’s 1979 Australian tour,... Read more

Few intellectuals are recognised as having the effect that Hugh Stretton (1924–2015) exuded in the social sciences and humanities. Indeed, when one assesses his influence on generations of academics, intellectuals and practitioners in the fields of history, urban and town planning, politics, sociology, economics, political economy and the philosophy of social science,... Read more