Australia

To my surprise I became the author of the official history of Australia, the one that the Howard government distributed to migrants so that they could prepare for the new citizenship test. The draft I wrote disappeared into the offices of the immigration minister and the prime minister. At some stages it looked like it would not survive or that a few sentences would be incorporated into an altogether different version. But finally it emerged more or less as I had written it - with some additions and deletions that I will detail below. Its survival is surprising because in its organisation it defied the policy of the government that commissioned it - for it is arranged thematically and not as a continuous narrative. John Howard made narrative the touchstone of good history. He called a History Summit to get a commitment to narrative from the history professionals; he ended his TV election debate with Kevin Rudd with a promise that if he were re-elected, a narrative history of Australia would be part of the school curriculum. But a continuous narrative is not what migrants get to read - and I believe their understanding of their new homeland will be the better for it.