Today is Anzac Day in Australia. Each year the national commemoration prompts a substantial amount of public reflection both on its meaning for Australians today, its place in Australia’s national identity and whether it should hold a place of such prominence. The Interpreter hosted two pieces on those topics this week, the first from historian James Curran:
The real risk for Australia’s wartime commemorative culture is not the proliferation of military histories weighing down the shelves of bookshops. Rather it is the danger that the rhetoric of Anzac becomes so caricatured and hackneyed that the occasion becomes little more than a …read more