I know a little of northern Holland, mainly as a tourist, first with my wife and three daughters in 1957. I sent the essay to a friend in Weesp, born in 1939, whose father was also a member of the underground. To Dick, the small boy, the Nazi units occupying Weesp seemed like a race of terrifying giants. These days it is he who places flowers on the graves of RAAF men, brothers to me sixty-five years ago, killed in Bomber Command, most in their early twenties.

Your essay, Elisabeth, drew me back to my own nightmares. For years I have wondered whether any longterm good came from the devastating raids we carried out – we, the mild-seeming men from Britain’s vanished empire, many from countries with no boundaries, knowing no enemies close at hand. Is it possible, after the terror we inflicted, that the countries of Europe might never again go to war? And is not forgiveness necessary for us all?

These thoughts I could not have uttered as I followed on your haunted journey.

Don Charlwood, Warrandyte, Vic.

Alternative Jewish voices

Dear Editor,

We are Jews with diverse opinions on the Middle East who share a deep concern about the current crisis in the region and who have formed a group, Independent Australian Jewish Voices. We are committed to ensuring a just peace that recognises the legitimate national aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians, with a solution that protects the human rights of all. We condemn violence by all parties, whether state-sanctioned or not. We believe that Israel’s right to exist must be recognised and that Palestinians’ right to a homeland must also be acknowledged.

As Australians, we are privileged to live in a democratic state that embodies the principles of tolerance and free speech. We feel there is an urgent need to hear alternative voices that should not be silenced by being labelled disloyal or ‘self-hating’. Uncritical allegiance to Israeli government policy does not necessarily serve Israel’s best interests. Our concern for justice and peace in the Middle East is a legitimate opinion and should be met by reasoned argument rather than by vilification and intimidation. In particular, we are concerned that the Jewish establishment does not represent the full range of Jewish opinion. Jews understand what it is to suffer racism and victimisation, and therefore we are not only concerned about anti-Semitism but also about the demonisation of all other minorities.

Dr Peter Slezak, Dr Jim Levy, Antony Loewenstein, Professor Peter Singer, Robert Richter QC, Louise Adler, Eva Cox, Professor Dennis Altman, Professor Arie Frieberg, Ian Cohen MLC, Professor Ivor Indyk, Moss Cass, Dr Geoffrey Brahm Levey, Professor Andrew Benjamin, Henry Rosenbloom, Professor Andrew Jakubowicz, Professor Ephraim Nimni, Professor David Goodman and more than 400 other signatories.

History as storytelling

Dear Editor,

In his review of my book Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian democracy (February 2007), Alan Atkinson has missed a point of difference between us that I want to make clear. Structure and style in Colonial Ambition were fashioned in response to my commitment to historical literacy and my belief that an embattled history culture in Australia must find new ways to connect with a readership beyond academe.

Apart from the scholarly introduction, the book is plotted as a story. Narrative movement shifts like a yacht tacking: from the local to the global, from the periphery (Sydney) to the centre (London), from the city to the bush, from economy to polity, from the politics of the legislature to the politics of the street – and, finally, from the public to the private lives of the key players.

In methodological terms, my challenge was to blend scholarship with narrative and to write political history as a continuous, interwoven drama of human lives. Colonial Ambition, in other words, is propelled by both drama and argument. The book is implicitly a plea for the renewal of scholarly narrative in Australian history, to reach an audience without compromising scholarship. I believe that Australian historians have a duty to think about literary form and historical literacy as much as we do about concepts, evidence, matters of interpretation etc. Atkinson seems to spurn this obligation. His review of Colonial Ambition is in part a swipe at a general readership that doesn’t care for colonial history. He goes on and on about uninterested readers. ‘The very term “powerful narrative” [he writes] assumes a receptive audience.’ He has given up. More likely, he never cared to try. He prefers, as he says, to ‘flaunt the eccentricities’ of his ‘trade’.

Simon Schama has made the point that too many academic historians have turned up their noses at the dramatic narrative form. Storytellers, Schama laments, have become ‘aggressively despised’. Yes indeed, by the likes of Atkinson, but not by all academic historians, nor readers outside academic history.

Peter Cochrane, Glebe, NSW

Alan Atkinson replies

Peter Cochrane says that I ‘spurn’ and ‘despise’ the need for scholars to tell stories and to reach the widest possible audience. And yet he has read my own book The Commonwealth of Speech (he made a kind reference to it in a footnote in Colonial Ambition), so he knows that isn’t true.

I am not sure why he should have thought a personal rejoinder was necessary for a review which was not meant personally. There is, of course, a receptive audience for history which is both powerful narrative and good scholarship, though at present it is not easy, as I said, to find that audience when the topic is a history of Australian democracy. I also doubt whether his own intended audience for Colonial Ambition would be receptive to the method he uses.

Mark Twain in Australia

Dear Editor,

Robert Phiddian’s review of The Wayward Tourist: Mark Twain’s adventures in Australia (December 2006–January 2007) describes the malign circumstances in which Sam Clemens undertook his jouney around the world, and the tragedy of his daughter’s death when he was about to write of his travels. The good humour he maintained throughout the writing was stoical indeed. ‘Lying cheerfulness’ he called it in a letter.

Your reviewer notes that MUP based the Australian extracts on Following the Equator (American Publishing Co., New York, 1897), but it should be mentioned that Clemens was residing in England, and that his London publishers, Chatto & Windus, brought out their edition under the title More Tramps Abroad. The two books are quite distinct, as described by Professor Dennis Welland, then head of the Department of American Studies in the University of Manchester, in his 1978 study Mark Twain in England. Following the Equator is a large, handsome volume with many illustrations by leading American artists, whereas More Tramps Abroad is in the standard Crown 8vo format, almost unillustrated.

The rather sporadic correspondence between Clemens’s New York editor Frank Bliss and Andrew Chatto in London, although it did achieve simultaneous publication on 12 November 1897, resulted in very different books in text as well as in presentation. Bliss took a severe line in pruning passages unlikely to appeal to American readers, including much Australian material (as indicated by his terse note: ‘Wearisome chapter on aboriginals – all dead now’). Chatto, on the other hand, published a much fuller text. Clemens himself was fairly unconcerned with these differences, though insistent on accuracy of punctuation and grammar.

Sir John Ferguson, in his great Bibliography of Australia, describes only the American work, maybe on the grounds that the author was American, and ignores Chatto’s edition, which should be considered the primary source for Australian readers. It is presumably because of Ferguson’s omission that the distinction has been ignored for so long (e.g. by Penguin Books in their Australian facsimile Mark Twain in Australia and New Zealand, using the American text).

Following the Equator had only a lukewarm reception in America; but the response of the British public to More Tramps Abroad was immediately enthusiastic, despite Clemens’s many strictures on the misdeeds of British imperialism. The grateful author became thereafter a champion of English character and values, though his general pessimism about human nature continued to the end.

Jack Bradstreet, Hawthorn, Vic.

Island politics

Dear Editor,

In her review of Overland, Griffith Review and Island (March 2007), Melinda Harvey analyses the contribution of each journal. I applaud her recognition of the often unapplauded work of journals. We do contribute to vital national conversations, often providing a space for voices unwelcome elsewhere in the media noise-scape. A big thank you to ABR for making space for reviews of journals like ours.

Harvey compares the three journals in terms of how they wear their politics. It would be interesting to see a broadening of her definition of political. We see Island’s willingness to provide space for a diversity of ‘contrarian’ writers as a political act. We publish those who are likely to be censored elsewhere because they are uncommercial or unfashionable. We publish those who are just emerging, those who don’t write fashionable opinions, those who seek to challenge readers.

It verges on the caricature for Harvey to describe our selection as ‘ushering readers to the banana lounge with the usual fare of reviews, poems and short stories’. In thus dismissing Island’s work, she misses the point. Island is not indulging the indolent banana-loungers by publishing first-time authors, poets and short fiction writers. Rather, we are providing a crucial service to Australian literary life in redressing the effects of censorship which work perniciously against writers in this conservative era. Island is being actively political in the way writers and readers need most.

Gina Mercer, Editor of Island, Hobart, Tas.