Past Programs
Classics - 2008
Inscriptions and marginalia - a tradition of annotations (repeat)
01/08/2008
How many of you feel comfortable about picking up a pen or pencil and writing inside a book that you might be reading? Although some people might consider this to be disrespectful of the work, there's a long tradition of inscribing thoughts around an existing text. A loose definition for these sorts of annotations is 'Marginalia'. Today on The Book Show we revisit a discussion about the function and value of these inscriptions over the centuries and what they can tell us about the journey a book has taken.
Joining the conversation are three people who have spent a great deal of time surrounded by books of all descriptions.
Professor Margaret Manion is one of Australia's most eminent and valued Art Historians, and brings a deep understanding of Medieval and Renaissance books and manuscripts.
Dr Nikki Hessell teaches Communication and Journalism at Massey University in New Zealand. Prior to that Nikki worked closely with Professor Heather Jackson in Toronto, studying the Marginalia of the Romantic Period, and especially the prolific annotations by Samuel Coleridge - and together Nikki and Heather produced a book called Romantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia.
And our third guest is Kay Craddock, whose antiquarian bookshop is something of an institution in Melbourne. Kay and her parents have been dealing in rare and valuable works for many decades and she brings a rich knowledge of the world of the book collector, and the importance of marginalia in determining the provenance and the authenticity of books.
(First broadcast 19/10/2007)
Timbuktu manuscripts: Rodney Hall Read Transcript
21/07/2008
The Timbuktu manuscripts tell a history of African trade and scholarship. They include texts about astronomy, poetry, music, medicine, religion and women's rights. Because of their significance to African history there is a joint African movement to preserve them. Rodney Hall, one of our most eminent writers, has just been to Timbuktu and describes what he found.
David Blow: Persia Read Transcript
23/06/2008
Ramona Koval says she didn't read classics at Oxford or Cambridge (which she regrets) and so she has a tendency to gravitate towards books that will round out her education. Like Persia: Through Writers Eyes, edited and written by David Blow, who did study history at Cambridge, and Persian at the School of African and Oriental Studies at the University of London.
He's been a journalist, a publisher and a broadcaster with the BBC's Persian Service. And his book is really a history of Persia through the words of writers from Herodotus, Marco Polo and Vita Sackville-West to writers commenting on present day Iran. He's written a preface to each section outlining the history of the period in which they wrote, and mapped the history of Persia up to latter day Iran—which adds up to about three thousand years of history—just what the autodidact with a thirst for knowledge needs.
Peter Cochrane: Colonial Ambition Read Transcript
07/04/2008
The story of Burke and Wills, and Ned Kelly -- these are the familiar characters in Australian history that re-surface in the popular imagination.
But why do we always return to these stories? Is it because, unlike America, we didn't have a war of independence, that our civil rights movement was overshadowed by what was happening on the international stage, that we formed government through consensus?
Is it because our colonial history is considered fusty and, well, a little dull?
Peter Cochrane thinks it doesn't need to be this way. He says that if historians used the toolbox of the novelist, Australian history would come to life.
Peter Cochrane is the author of Colonial Ambition, which won The Age Book Of The Year Award and was joint winner of the first Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History.
Colonial Ambition focuses on the character William Wentworth, and Peter wrote an article about this man's place in the human drama of our early colony in an article in the recent Griffith Review. The essay's called 'Stories From The Dustbin', and Peter joins Ramona Koval from the ABC's Sydney studios.
Historian Jonathan Richards Read Transcript
11/03/2008
Jonathan Richards' new book The Secret War: A True History of Queensland's Native Police is the result of ten years research into the world of this group of armed men who operated on the state's frontier in the 19th century. More paramilitary organisation than police force, the native police was made up of mounted Aboriginal troopers under the command of white officers, who usually had a background in the British Army. Their role was to 'disperse' troublesome groups of Aborigines. Jonathan Richards tells Peter Mares what he discovered about the real meaning of 'dispersal'.
