Volume LIII Number 12
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Books
Beyond Awkening by Ian McFarlane
The biggest enemy of truth isn’t the lie, it’s the myth!
—The West Wing
The writing of Tasmania’s history has now deteriorated into a formula not dissimilar to Midsomer Murders. Scholarship has been replaced by scriptwriters locked into the same old cast of characters, the same old set-piece plots, the same old locations and the same old ideology-driven notions of an island steeped in murder, massacres and genocide. Indeed the latest three episodes of Midsomer Murders almost sum up the present academic mindset on Tasmanian history—Episode 57, A Picture of Innocence; Episode 55, The Axeman Cometh; Episode 56, Death and Dust.
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