The RHSV is delighted to co-host with the Genealogical Society of Victoria this ZOOM conversation with Emeritus Professor Graeme Davison AO about his latest book, My Grandfather’s Clock.

A great-aunt’s bequest – a 200-year-old grandfather clock – sends historian Graeme Davison on a journey deep into his father’s family’s past. From their tribal homeland in the Scottish Borders he follows them to the garrison town of Carlisle, from industrial Birmingham to Edwardian Australia, and from the Great War to his own suburban childhood. This is the story of an ordinary family’s journey from frontier warfare and dispossession through economic turmoil and emigration to modest prosperity. At each step, we are led to reflect on the puzzles of personal identity and the mystery of time. Based on a lifetime of creative scholarship, My Grandfather’s Clock is a moving testament to the power of family history to illuminate the present.

Graeme Davison was born in Melbourne and educated at the universities of Melbourne and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and at the Australian National University. He has taught at the University of Melbourne and from 1982 to 2005 was Professor of History at Monash University. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard, Edinburgh, ANU, Tübingen and King’s College, London. His books include The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne (1978 and 2004), The Unforgiving Minute: How Australia Learned to Tell the Time (1994), The Use and Abuse of Australian  History (2000), Car Wars: How the Car Won Our Hearts and Conquered our Cities (2004) and University Unlimited: The Monash Story (2012) (with Kate Murphy). He was also a co-editor of The Oxford Companion to Australian History. His most recent publications are Lost Relations: Fortunes of My Family in Australia’s Golden Age (2015), Trendyville: The Battle for Australia’s Inner Cities (2015) (with Renate Howe and David Nichols) and City Dreamers: The Urban Imagination in Australia (2016). He is a former President of the Australian Historical Association, Chairman of the Heritage Council of Victoria, a Fellow of the Australian Academies of Social Sciences and Humanities, and a prominent advisor and commentator on museums, heritage and urban policy. In 2011 he was made an Officer in the Order of Australia.

Graeme’s book will be published on the 5 September, pre-orders taken now on the RHSV bookshop website.

The ZOOM log-in details will be sent to registrants 24 hours before the event.