Shortly after I arrived in London in 1993, I noticed that the premiere of Schindler’s List was imminent. It took no great brain storming to guess that Tom Keneally would probably be in the offing somewhere and so I tracked him down and got him to agree to a reading or a talk for London University’s intransigently named Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies of which I was the new Director. The event was held amid the baroque yet somehow endearing excesses of the Downer Room (which is actually an upper room) at the Australian High Commission; sixty or seventy people came at fairly short notice, drinks and food were served and Tom gave a fine performance. This piece of opportunism came about partly because I had inchoate ideas in my head of trying to set up a regular series of Australian readings at the High Commission. When, a little while later, the paperback publication in Britain of Remembering Babylon was announced, I knew fate was on my side. I got in touch with David Malouf whom I rightly expected would be on hand, and, with the ever-generous and whole hearted support of Neal Blewett, the Australian High Commissioner, a second highly successful reading took place to about one hundred enthusiasts. Chris Wallace-Crabbe and Rob Drewe followed with distinction during ensuing months and, by the time Peter Porter stood up to read early in 1994, the audience was pushing two hundred (with a good sprinkling now of Poms) and we were running out of space. The enterprise had acquired its own momentum, character and reputation and needed a name. Rebecca Hossack, the Cultural Affairs officer at the High Commission, suggested we ‘borrow’ the name of the marvellous travelling poster exhibition which had been launched in London a short time earlier. So we did: and ‘Literary Links’ went on to fame, though little fortune, as a joint venture of the Menzies Centre and the High Commissioner. To formalise our piracy of the title, willingly allowed by the British Council as the exhibitions custodian, we arranged for Peter’s reading to take place while the posters were on show in the Downer Room. ‘Literary Links’ – the readings – went on during the next three years to overflow into the High Commission’s huge, changelier-hung main hall downstairs, with audiences of between three and four hundred. That’s why, when I saw the title of Roslyn Russell’s handsome volume, I felt I might brush away a modest and nostalgic tear.

Ian Templeman and Roslyn Russell dreamed up the idea of an exhibition demonstrating the literary links between Australian and Britain; Roslyn Russell wrote the text and curated and Kathy Jukupec designed it. This book is a spin-off, arising out of the mass of material Russell had collected, of which only a fraction had been used in the exhibition.

In her introduction, Russell makes a few disclaimers: Literary Links, she says,

makes no attempts at formal analysis of the works included ... rather they are used as evidence to support particular themes which have been developed throughout [the] book. It does not claim to be a definitive history of the literary relationship between Britain and Australia... But if it recalls forgotten connections, or makes readers aware of important new ones, it will have accomplished its objectives.

This is probably over cautious. While it is certainly not a critical book, and while many of the ‘links’ will be very familiar to most readers, Literary Links covers an enormous amount of ground, is meticulously researched (Russell is a well-known I historian and research specialist), is nicely written and well organised.

The more famous and familiar links – Lawson’s ‘wild run to London’, Clive James and Germaine Greer at Cambridge, D.H. Lawrence in Australia – are all to be found here, of course. But so are many others that only specialists would know – John Dunmore Lang’s reflection on colonial government, for example:

there is no other form of government either practicable or possible, in a British colony obtaining its freedom and independence, than that of a republic … Why … should Englishmen object to a Republic … for their emancipated colonies? Why should they object to a form of government which has given birth, in every department of human excellence, to a series of the greatest and noblest men that have ever trod the earth?

Or the notorious J.I.M. Stewart’s marginal part in the Ern Malley affair and its subsequent obscenity trial. Or the briefing, given to composer Thomas Wood on the eve of his embarkation to Australia in the 1930s by an Admiral who had encountered Australians at Gallipoli:

A great country in many ways, my dear doctor, and a great people –in many ways. You’ll probably like both. I did ... But the place is full of contradictions, incongruities – just like the people ... They take no interest in any country except Australia –and they call England home. They tear one another to bits; but they sulk if a stranger criticises anything ... the one thing you must not do is to judge Australia, real Australia, by the rank and file of its politicians ... 

Russell’s interviews with British writers are always informative and engaging. There is a double edge, though, in many of these enthusiastic encomiums uttered by English writers overwhelmed, with the wonder of their antipodean adventure: why should they be so amazed at the liveliness and diversity of Australian literary culture? It’s that old assumption that of course we know all about them, but only wide-eyed visitations will alert them to the wonder of us! The heavy volume of literary links traced and described so ably by Russell hasn’t done much for the pervasive ignorance of Australian literary culture that one encounters everywhere and routinely and at all levels in England and which no amount of southward venturing seems to change. When Fay Weldon says of Australia, ‘All British writers in search of inspiration should go to Australia. It gives one a sense of clarity. Subtexts are articulated there,’ it reminds me of the leonine chairman of the House of Commons Tory Back Bench Committee on the Commonwealth to the members of which I once gave a talk. ‘All my children have been to Orstralia,’ he told me. ‘Knocks a lot of foolishness out of them and a lot of sense into them. Best Finishing School there is.’ One of course doesn’t know what to say to this son of thing does one? Rather demeaning for one to be grateful; yet silly for one to get on one’s high horse ... rather.

But this is churlish, no doubt, even if it underlines the fact that there are links still to be contemplated, links still to be made. Roslyn Russell’s book is a fine and sumptuously realised record of what has happened so far.