Deconstructing the 1960s and 1970s

An open letter to Keith and Liz Windschuttle

(Once again, with apologies to E.P. Thompson and Leszek Kolokowski)

Dear Liz and Keith,

I have known you both since we were young together in the creative and liberating turmoil of the sixties. Keith was my editor for a period when Keith Windschuttle, Liz Windschuttle, Hall Greenland and Rowan Cahill, amongst others, were the editorial collective of the Old Mole and I was a contributor. Hall and Rowan, both of whom are still firmly on the left, were your close personal friends, as well as your political associates, and Hall was the best man at your wedding. In the 1970s, my first wife Mairi, and my daughter, Natalie, lived close to your home in the Eastern Suburbs, and my daughter, who was older than your daughter Ruby, was sometimes her babysitter. Small human connections like this create bonds that often continue to exist even when deep political and ideological differences develop.

Interrogating Miriam Dixson

An open letter to an old colleague

(With apologies to E.P. Thompson and Leszek Kolokowski)

Bob Gould

I was a bit startled a few months back when your name and your then forthcoming book, The Imaginary Australian, were invoked by Paul Sheehan and several other right-wing journalists to validate their hostility to migration, multiculturalism and so-called “black armband history”. This populist Janissary tabloid pack is riding high at the moment in the print media.

Multiculturalism and Australian national identity

Bob Gould

John Howard and I grew up in the same part of Sydney, and he is a couple of years younger than me. I grew up at Beverly Hills on the East Hills railway line and for most of my school life, between 1946 and 1953, I used to get the train to Kingsgrove and then the bus across to Strathfield, to St Patricks, the Christian Brothers College there.