This fascinating study canvasses four generations of an extended family of Jewish atheists and committed communists who challenged the “established order” in Australia and overseas.
The book’s author, Mark Aarons, came under the “adverse notice” of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation in early 1965 when he was only 13, while his father’s ASIO files began when he was 14, in the early 1930s. Indeed, one of the great strengths of The Family File is the extensive use made of the detailed reports of the many ASIO agents who successfully infiltrated the …

Colonial Australia was a dumping ground for activists who fought for the freedoms that we take for granted today.
This concisely written, effectively illustrated “history from below” focuses on all those rebels and political malcontents banished by British authorities to the ends of the earth in the Antipodes.
Death or Liberty: Rebel Exiles Transported to Australia 1788-1868 usefully adopts the historiographical approach of the leading 20th-century scholars E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm and George Rude to understand and elucidate the forces producing rebellion in the mother country. As Moore explains, studies by these …

“Go for your life, sport.” That was my curt introduction to Alan Reid, the doyen of the Canberra press gallery. As a green young hack in the mid-1960s I’d tip-toed into the Daily Telegraph office in old Parliament House wanting to cadge some telex time to file my copy to Sydney. Reid was perched in his usual corner like a vulture in a rumpled suit, a roll-your-own durrie in his nicotine-stained fingers. It was a Saturday afternoon. All the politicians were back in their electorates, but The Red Fox …

Who took the damning 1963 photographs of “the 36 Faceless Men”? Although actually it was 35 Men and one ‘Faceless’ Woman!
Professor Ross Fitzgerald’s speech about ALAN (“THE RED FOX”) REID at Dalton’s Books, 54 Marcus Clarke St, crn Rudd Street, Canberra, Wednesday June 30, 6 pm.
Thanks indeed Laurie (Oakes). As recent events here in Canberra demonstrate, in the ALP the faceless men and the factional warlords certainly live on! In many ways, the tiny Machiavellian world of Alan Reid is virtually the same world that made Julia Gillard PM.
In his …

You may be interested to know that this fine film-noir front cover photograph of ALAN (“THE RED FOX”) REID almost never saw the light of day because two influential people, who shall remain nameless, did not want to see in 2010 a photo of someone smoking a cigarette! How about that? Yet sadly, although he stopped drinking and gambling, Reid never stopped smoking, and eventually died of lung and stomach cancer.
Speaking of photos, in our biography of Alan Reid the mystery of the ALP’s Faceless Men story and photos has …

READING a biography of the controversial and legendary Australian journalist Alan Reid, it’s hard not to be nostalgic for the days when journos chain-smoked at their desks, wore hats, and got their best tips over the poker table.
Reid, who died in 1987 after covering 20 federal elections, is worthy of a book as he combined some of the best and worst aspects of political journalism. Not only was he a superb chronicler of the news, he was also a player, using his contacts to shape the events themselves.
At the beginning …