AUSTRALIA - MEMORIES OF TIMES PAST

This elegant and informative book, inspired by the evocative paintings of Percy Spence first published in the pioneering 1910 book Australia offers a new way of looking at the sights and social history of a young country still in the process of creating its own identity.

Each painting,, newly scanned and enlarged, is placed in its period context with an informed commentary and related images, from original photographs and engravings to period maps and postcards.

The introduction by social historian Tony Hughes d'Aeth sets the historical scene for a vibrant, hard-working, hard-playing young nation in which far-reaching social and economic change sits, sometimes uneasily, against an arcadian vision in which many Edwardian Australians believed that they had created a society and way of life which was about as good as it would ever get. Most could not possibly imagine that within a few short years Australia would play a crucial part in a global conflict which would shake that belief to the core.