Nathan Hobby
@NathanHobby
Biographer, scholar & special collections librarian. Author of THE RED WITCH, 2023 WA Premier's Prize Book of the Year. Writing a life of @JohnCurtin1885.
I'm glad reviews don't come out all at once. The new issue of the Australian Journal of Biography and History has the most generous and engaged review by @ChSpittel of my book The Red Witch press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/pres…
TV THAT TIME FORGOT: Wait Til Your Father Gets Home (Hanna-Barbera, 1972-74) Simpson-anticipating cartoon-for-adults sitcom with put-upon all-American everyman Harry Boyle constantly exasperated by squabbling kids, hippies on the make and Nixon-saluting survivalist neighbours.
Every moral panic about new media is correct, from literacy on down. They overstate how bad it is, and underestimate the adjustment, but literacy did kill memorization. Recorded music did kill making music together. TV did kill socialization, then social media killed it more.
My current rough sense of history is that the last "moral panic" about social media turned out to be accurate warnings. The bad things actually happened, as measured by eyeball and by instrument. Now we all live in the wreckage. Anyone want to dispute this?
In my bid to make 2025 ‘autograph book summer’ I share Iris Murdoch’s autograph from 1969 (when she came to my school with Adrian Henri) and Richard Coles’ autograph from 2017. @RevRichardColes (Also a few drawings by VTM in a much older autograph book)
CFP: 19th Biennial Conference, The Spirit of 1975: Transformations in Australian Labour History, will be held in Melbourne 26 – 28 November 2025. Keynote speakers @palaceletters, @fbongiornoanu, and @MichelleArrow1 Papers on a range of topics are welcome. labourhistory.org.au/asslh-conferen…
'What the Trees See: A Wander Through Millennia of Natural History in Australia' explores how trees bear witness to our past. From Adelaide to Arnhem Land, these stories reveal deep ecological and cultural histories. A wonderful book! Discover more: publishing.monash.edu/product/what-t…
Few people are familiar with the Roderick prize or its history, despite the fact that it is an annual award worth a massive $50,000. From the outset, it was designed to be a twin for the Miles Franklin Award--Australia's most famous literary award jcu.edu.au/news/releases/…
Enjoyed the Writers Museum in Edinburgh, had some great materials on Robert Louis Stevenson in particular!
The ANU proposes to abandon the study of Australian English - but cybernetics is on the up and up! Truly, the worst University leadership in my lifetime. From bluey to bogans: Researchers who help define how the nation speaks to lose their jobs smh.com.au/national/from-…
This guy embodies courage and a life lived by principle. And this incident shows life in a state ruled by Meg O'Neill. thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environme…
I wrote about Zachary Leader's "Ellmann's Joyce" for @insidestorymag , on one of the twentieth century's great biographies: insidestory.org.au/richard-ellman…
I was in my early 20s when I first read Rose Thurgood’s account of her life, written in 1636-7 while she was fearing that she and her four children would starve to death, such was their poverty. This was a completely different voice to those I was used to encountering in…
The $800,000 hoovered up by the Chancellor would pay the salaries of all staff in three centres that the ANU is proposing to abolish- the Humanities Research Centre, the Europe Centre and the Australian National Dictionary Centre.
The governance crisis at ANU is a national scandal. Julie Bishop must go. We need sector-wide reform. afr.com/politics/feder…
My @WritingNSW online feedback course for non-fiction starts 8 Sep. Each month you send up to 1500 words of creative non-fiction (essay, review, or a chunk of something longer – memoir/travel writing/etc.) and I give you feedback on structure, pacing, voice, tone, dialogue, etc.
'A Heart Afire: Helen Brook Taussig’s Battle Against Heart Defects' open.substack.com/pub/gabriellak… @PMeisol0829 @mitpress
So good to hear a voice from within the nursing home, and such a measured, poignant piece. theguardian.com/science/2025/j…
Delighted and relieved to see a first finished copy of “The Letters of T. S. Eliot”, volume 10, to be published in late July. My dear thanks to the Eliot Estate & everyone at Faber & Faber who have helped me bring it into being.
Iconic anti-war poster, originally by US printmaker Lorraine Schneider, 1966 #ReframingWomenPrintmakers