Advertisement
Neville Yeomans, 'Paul Hasluck through the Palace Letters: "… not been a proconsul of more diverse attainment since Cicero"'SHAPS Fellows & Friends meeting
As a consequence of Professor Jenny Hocking’s success in the High Court of Australia, which ruled that the correspondence between Governor-General Sir John Kerr and The Queen (via her private secretary) ‘is constituted by Commonwealth records within the meaning of the Archives Act…’, the correspondence with six other Governors-General was digitized (albeit after a two-year delay) by the National Archives and made publicly available.
This paper will examine the correspondence from 1969 to 1974 between Sir Paul Hasluck, as Governor-General of Australia, and Sir Michael Adeane and Sir Martin Charteris as the Private Secretaries to Queen Elizabeth II. It focuses on the text of the Hasluck letters seen through the lens of his polymath background in civic and public life prior to his appointment as Governor-General. On Hasluck’s retirement, Gough Whitlam said of him: ‘There has not been a proconsul of more diverse attainment since Cicero’, after which Hasluck took him aside and noted that Cicero should be pronounced with hard not soft c’s. Hasluck’s letters show a deep understanding of the political process, of the actors who perform in it, and of constitutional processes and proprietaries — leavened throughout with his keen sense of humour and word craftmanship. It will end with a brief counter-history.
Neville Yeomans is Professor Emeritus in Medicine at the Universities of Melbourne and Western Sydney, and recently completed his PhD in history guided by Stuart Macintyre and Sean Scalmer. He currently holds a Palace Letters Fellowship through the Whitlam Institute.
$10.00 for talk and refreshments
Bookings: email Graham Dudley: [email protected]
The talk proper will begin at 5:30pm.
Advertisement
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
257 Old Arts building, University of Melbourne Parkville campus, Old Arts, Grattan St, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia,Melbourne, Victoria, Australia