Exactly a hundred years after the six Australian colonies voted to become a Federation, the country is struggling with the idea of a republic and a new Constitution, and at last coming to terms with its tangled British legacy.
Michael Davie, an English journalist, has been shuttling between the two countries for most of his working life, constantly surprised at the way the British shave dared to patronise Australians, and unsurprised by the secret resentment thereby stirred up (and often concealed) in Australia. He has now dug into the story of this strange relationship, marked as it is nowadays by Australia's separation anxiety over cutting the old links, to see how it has developed over two hundred years.
Taking a dozen key episodes and themes, ranging from William Wentworth's attempt in the nineteenth century at setting up an imitation House of Lords, to royal visits and social snobbery, Gallipoli, the great 1920s cricketing drama of Bodyline, the alleged betrayal by Churchill of Australia in WWII, the birth of the Whingeing Pom, the classification of Australians by the British as foreigners, and the roots of the modern Republican movement, Davie has combined historical enquiry with interviews, original research, and his own encounters and experiences.
He gives a highly personal, elegant and entertaining account of a subject that should interest everyone who knows or hopes to know Australia, from the cricket-lovers who hate Shane Warne to the thousands with an auntie in Perth.
