Henry Reynolds in conversation

Henry Reynolds is Australia’s pre-eminent historian. In the early eighties he single-handedly changed the way Australian history was conducted when he shone a light on the way the country had been settled with his book The Other Side of the Frontier. His work prompted a flowering of study about Aboriginal-White relations throughout the two hundred years since white settlement. Reynolds himself went on to write more than twelve books focusing on the subject, including the best selling Why Weren’t We Told?, a very personal account of how he came to understand that he, like most people in Australia, had a distorted view of the country’s past. The research he undertook played a major part in the Wik and Mabo judgements, indeed he was a close friend of Eddie Mabo. Mr Reynolds is in conversation here about his most recent book, Forgotten War. This work draws on the many studies undertaken in recent years to tell the story of the Frontier Wars, and to ask why it is there are no official memorials or commemorations to them; indeed, why it should be that it is even more controversial to discuss them now than it was a hundred years ago. Kate Grenville writes of the book: ‘A brilliant light shone into a dark forgetfulness: ground-breaking, authoritative, compelling.'