Past Programs
History - 2005
Drought - the Red Marauder
10/12/2005
One of the less controversial decisions the Federal government made this week was to continue to provide drought aid to many regions across the country.
To one observer of the Australian condition, this will come as a very, very familiar story.
He is the historian Michael McKernan, and he has just published a study of the role of drought in Australian history. Drought is a constant in our life, he finds, but it seems to come as a surprise every time.
Luddites
27/08/2005
If you've hit or sworn at your computer you're not the only one, and there's even a term to describe the rocky relationship humans have with technology: CRAP - Computer Rage, Anxiety and Phobia. Now everyone's heard the term Luddite. These days it's usually used to insult someone who isn't smart enough to embrace the latest technological development, and who's stuck in the past. But Nicols Fox has looked closely at the motivations and practices of Luddites over the last 200 years and written a very comprehensive book called Against the Machine.
Afterlife of Gardens
02/07/2005
We have, in the past, looked at many gardens, but we've tended to limit ourselves to the vision of the designers and the restoration of their original plans. So what have we been missing? Well, when you visit famous gardens like Versailles or Claude Monet's Garden, even though they may have been meticulously maintained, you're likely to see them very differently from the way their creators intended, or countless other generations of visitors have seen and understood them.
So, to right the imbalance, we have a close look at gardens from the point of view of the visitor. Alan Saunders talks to John Dixon Hunt, a very distinguished garden historian who has examined responses to gardens over time in a wonderful new book called The Afterlife of Gardens.
Holocaust Denial
21/05/2005
Deborah Lipstadt on her long, ultimately successful, legal battle with Holocaust denier, David Irving.
Dresden Cathedral
07/05/2005
We take a close look at the rebuilding of one important building that was destroyed in 1945: Dresden Cathedral. The British bombing of Dresden, and the huge firestorms that resulted, totally destroyed an area measuring 11 square miles of the inner city and killed a large proportion of the city's population. The air raids, even today, are controversial, with many historians questioning the necessity of the attacks. But over the past 60 years Germany has rebuilt the cities and towns that suffered under the weight of the war, and developed important links to its European neighbours. It's been a time of mourning, reconstruction and reconciliation and the Dresden Cathedral, or the Frauenkirche, is a symbol of all these things. The chief architect of the new Cathedral, Thomas Gottschlich, talks to Geraldine Doogue.
God Save the Queen? Camilla and Prince Charles
12/02/2005
Prince Charles has announced that he and Camilla Parker-Bowles will wed in April. The British public has greeted this news with the sympathetic disinterest that they generally accord to the Royal family these days.
Johann Hari, columnist for the Independent newspaper, has written a book analysing the Windsors as an ordinary, if dysfunctional, family. He points out that if Charles was not a royal, he would have been able to marry Camilla 30 years ago, and a lot of people would have been spared a lot of unhappiness.
