ABSTRACT

By any measure, Manning Clark (1915-1991) is Australia’s most well-known and controversial historian. Born only seven weeks before Australian soldiers landed at Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915, Clark’s intellectual life was framed by the great ideological struggle of the twentieth century, which began with the Russian Revolution in 1917 and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. By the time of his death on 23 May 1991, he had also witnessed the slow yet inexorable decline of the British connection in Australia.