Based on frank and revealing interviews with mothers and sons of all ages, Babette Smith's ground-breaking book tells the truth about this crucial relationship. She probes behind the myths and the silences to uncover some surprising answers.Many middle-aged sons confess to being bored in their mother's company. Many say they felt unloved as children, but have forgotten that masculine pressures made them reject their mother's affection. On the other hand, mothers are afraid of being...

New edition of the bestselling history that traces the chequered story of 100 women transported together in 1829 to Sydney. Includes new information on the women and treatment of convicts and new illustrations. Intrigued to discover a convict ancestor in her family tree Babette Smith decided to investigate her life and the lives of the 99 women who were transported with her on the ship Princess Royal in 1829. Piece by piece she reveals the story of her ancestor the indomitable Susannah Wat...

A groundbreaking history of convicts in Australia which lays bare the distortions and myths that caused the nation to deny its own past.; Why is it that Australians are still misled by myths about their convict heritage? Why are so many family historians surprised to find a convict ancestor in their family trees? Why did an entire society collude to cover up its past? Babette Smith traces the stories of hundreds of convicts over the 80 years of convict transportation to Australia. Putting ...

The author of the bestselling Cargo of Women and Australia's Birthstain tracks the lives of Irish convicts who arrived in Australia the mid-1800s, uncovering a long-lasting influence of the Irish convicts on our national character.The luck of the Irish was chronic bad luck, as their sad history attests. That's how it looked for 250 Irish convicts when their ship, the Hive, sank ignominiously off the New South Wales coast in 1835. Miraculo...

Why is it that Australians are still misled by myths about their convict heritage? Why are so many family historians surprised to find a convict ancestor in their family trees? Why did an entire society collude to cover up its past?Babette Smith traces the stories of hundreds of convicts over the 80 years of convict transportation to Australia. Putting a human face on the convicts' experience, she paints a rich picture of their crimes in Britain and their lives in the colonies. We ...

Batavia is the greatest story in Australia�s history. The Shipwreck of the Batavia combines in just the one tale the birth of the world's first corporation, the brutality of colonisation, the battle of good vs evil, the derring-do of sea-faring adventure, mutiny, ship-wreck, love, lust, blood-lust, petty fascist dictatorship, criminality, a reign of terror, murders most foul, sexual slavery, natural nobility, survival, retribution, rescue, first contact with native peoples and so much more...

The inspiration for the critically acclaimed Starz miniseries The White Queen, #1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory brings to life the extraordinary story of Elizabeth Woodville, a woman who rises from obscurity to become Queen of England, and changes the course of history forever.Elizabeth Woodville is a woman of extraordinary beauty and ambition. Her mother is Jacquetta, also known as the mystical lady of the rivers, and she is ...

Eureka Stockade - the unfinished revolution . . . In 1854, Victorian miners fought a deadly battle under the flag of the Southern Cross at the Eureka Stockade. Though brief and doomed to fail, the battle is legend in both our history and in the Australian mind. Henry Lawson wrote poems about it, its symbolic flag is still raised, and even the nineteenth-century visitor Mark Twain called it: � a strike for liberty�. Was this rebellion a fledgling nation�s first attempt to assert its indepen...

Sir Douglas Mawson, born in 1882 and knighted in 1914, remains Australia's greatest Antarctic explorer. On 2 December 1911, his Australasian Antarctic Expedition left Hobart to explore the virgin frozen coastline below Australia, 2000 miles of which had never felt the tread of a human foot. He was on his way to fulfil a national dream he had first conceived three years earlier, while on his first trip to the frozen continent on the Nimrod expedition under the leadership of the charismatic ...

"And in this quiet moment as I close my eyes, spent and sated, I think I'm in the eye of the storm. And in spite of all he's said, and what he hasn't said, I don't think I have ever been so happy."When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, find...

Girt. No word could better capture the essence of Australia...In this hilarious history, David Hunt tells the real story of Australia's past from megafauna to Macquarie ... the cock-ups and curiosities, the forgotten eccentrics and Eureka moments that have made us who we are.Mark Twain wrote of Australian history: 'It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies ... but they are all true, they all happened.' In Girt, Hunt uncovers these beautiful li...

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER'Fascinatingly imaginative popular history.' Sydney Morning HeraldOn 25 April 1915, Allied forces landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in present-day Turkey to secure the sea route between Britain and France in the west and Russia in the east. After eight months of terrible fighting, they would fail.Turkey regards the victory to this day as a defining moment in its history, a heroic last stand in the d...