Australia's most amazing characters of the convict age. 'Aussies love a good story and entertainer Jim Haynes has been telling them for decades' —Courier-Mail In Heroes, Rebels and Radicals of Convict Australia, our master storyteller Jim Haynes has collected a fascinating cast of characters who embody the resourcefulness, bravery, defiance, successes and tragedies of the convict era, the men and women who forged the nation we would one day become. There's Joseph Banks, the true founder of the colony; Surgeon John White, the saviour of the First Fleet; Pemulwuy, the Bidjigal freedom fighter; Mary Reiby, the horse thief who made good; Sapy Lovell, the Eora gypsy convict; John Donohue, the wild colonial boy; Lady Jane Franklin, the true leader of Van Diemen's Land – and many more! Why did transportation occur, why did it end, and what was it like living in Australia from 1788 to 1870? Skilfully researched and told in Jim's warm and witty style, Heroes, Rebels and Radicals of Convict Australia answers these questions and brings to life well-known and unknown figures from Australia's history as a penal settlement. This is the true story of the colonisation of Australia. 'In a year when we could all use a different perspective Jim Haynes came to the rescue with his latest sojourn into history . . . a cast of colourful characters.' —Spectator

Australia's most amazing characters of the convict age. In Heroes, Rebels & Radicals of Convict Australia, our master storyteller Jim Haynes has collected a fascinating cast of characters who embody the resourcefulness, bravery, defiance, successes and tragedies of the convict era, the men and women who forged the nation we would one day become. There's Joseph Banks, the true founder of the colony; Surgeon John White, the saviour of the First Fleet; Pemulwuy, the Bidjigal freedom fighter; Mary Reiby, the horse thief who made good; Sapy Lovell, the Eora gypsy convict; John Donohue, the wild colonial boy; Lady Jane Franklin, the true leader of Van Diemen's Land - and many more! Why did transportation occur, why did it end, and what was it like living in Australia from 1788 to 1870? Skilfully researched and told in Jim's warm and witty style, Heroes, Rebels & Radicals of Convict Australia answers these questions and brings to life well-known and unknown figures from Australia's history as a penal settlement. This is the true story of the colonisation of Australia.

Death or Liberty reveals how the British Government of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries banished to the end of the earth Australia political enemies viewed by authorities with the same alarm as today s terrorists : Jacobins, democrats and republicans; machine breakers, food rioters, trade unionists, and Chartists; Irish, Scots, Canadian and even American rebels. While criminals in the eyes of the law, many of these prisoners were heroes and martyrs to their own communities, and are still revered in their homelands as freedom fighters and patriots, progressive thinkers, democrats and reformers. Yet in Australia, the land of their exile, memory of these rebels and their causes has dimmed. This is the first narrative history that brings together the stories of the political prisoners sent as convicts to Australia from all parts of the British Empire, spanning the early days of the penal settlement at Sydney Cove until transportation ended in 1868. Author Tony Moore asks who were these prisoners, and what led them to take the radical actions they did? Why did the authorities so fear these dissenters and rebels, and was transportation effective in halting dissent? What became of the political convicts in Australia and who escaped or returned home?

Now a major documentary film starring Billy Bragg In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the British Government banished their political enemies - viewed with the same alarm as today's 'terrorists' - to the shores of Australia. Sent as convicts to the other side of the world, these political prisoners included liberals, democrats and republicans; machine breakers, food rioters, trade unionists and Chartists; radical journalists and intellectuals; Irish revolutionaries, Scottish Jacobins, and Canadian and even American insurgents. Criminals and traitors in the eyes of the law, many of these transported political prisoners were heroes and martyrs to their own communities, and are still revered in their homelands as freedom fighters and patriots, progressive thinkers and crusading reformers. Yet in Australia, memory of these rebels and their causes has dimmed. In Death or Liberty historian Tony Moore brings new life to their stories and restores them to their rightful place in Australian and world history. 'This important and dramatic era of Australian, Irish and British Empire history has been too often only partially told. Now we have the whole vivid tale, told by an excellent historian and engrossing narrator. Here we become fascinated by the lives of patriots and prisoners, and prisoners, and of those who try to contain and punish them-all in terms which light up the past and have an unexpected relevance to the present.' - Thomas Keneally 'In Death or Liberty Tony Moore has uncovered Australia's forgotten history as an instrument of state terror used against political radicals. Told with passionate verve, this is a tale full of dramatic incident, tragic loss, hair-breadth escapes, and the triumph of new ideas. Moore has returned Australia to its rightful place in the global battle over what it means to be free.' - Associate Professor Kirsten McKenzie, University of Sydney '"Death or Liberty!" was the call to arms of many of the agitators and rebels whom Britain banished to Australia. Tony Moore has woven their stories together as one-an eloquent and committed narrative.' - Dr Peter Cochrane, author of Colonial Ambition

Jim Haynes upturns some of the long-held myths of Australian history with surprising results. With all the skills of the master storyteller that he is, Jim Haynes exposes some of the great myths of Australian history. Did you know that Portuguese and Spanish explorers probably found the east coast of Australia before Captain Cook, and that the Rum Rebellion was not caused by rum? And what about Banjo Paterson writing Waltzing Matilda? As for Ned Kelly being a brave freedom-fighting rebel, in truth he was a thief, a thug and a murderer. The Ashes have nothing to do with cricket, the Ghan is not named after Afghan cameleers and Hargraves lied about discovering gold in New South Wales. Surprising, confounding, revealing and fun, Jim Haynes takes us on another great journey through Australian history and folklore.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZERoots, Radicals & Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is the first book to explore this phenomenon in depth - a meticulously researched and joyous account that explains how skiffle sparked a revolution that shaped pop music as we have come to know it. It's a story of jazz pilgrims and blues blowers, Teddy Boys and beatnik girls, coffee-bar bohemians and refugees from the McCarthyite witch-hunts. Billy traces how the guitar came to the forefront of music in the UK and led directly to the British Invasion of the US charts in the 1960s.Emerging from the trad-jazz clubs of the early '50s, skiffle was adopted by kids who growing up during the dreary, post-war rationing years. These were Britain's first teenagers, looking for a music of their own in a pop culture dominated by crooners and mediated by a stuffy BBC. Lonnie Donegan hit the charts in 1956 with a version of 'Rock Island Line' and soon sales of guitars rocketed from 5,000 to 250,000 a year. Like punk rock that would flourish two decades later, skiffle was a do-it-yourself music. All you needed were three guitar chords and you could form a group, with mates playing tea-chest bass and washboard as a rhythm section.

A unique collection of poignant, horrific, sad and sometimes dryly humorous stories and tales about wartime experiences of Australian's on the front lines, in the air and on the sea. 'The bravest thing God ever made,' said a British officer of the insubordinate Aussies at Gallipoli. And before the Normandy invasion, Field Marshal Montgomery's chief of staff remarked, 'I only wish we had the Australian 9th Division with us this morning'. But there is more to the Australian experience of war than heroic endeavour and bravery. Jim Haynes has rediscovered stories that are as harrowing as they are uplifting, as strange as they are brutal and as heart-breaking as they are humorous. From Federation to the Vietnam War, from our first VC winner to our hundredth, this sweeping overview of Australia's military adventures both overseas and at home is a guide to understanding how this nation's role in the twentieth century's major conflicts unfolded as each war ebbed and flowed. These stories have formed Australia's collective memory of war. Some battles and campaigns are household names, although their historical significance may have been lost. Others are barely remembered now but are part of our history and deserve to be retold. These are the accounts, recollections and legends that explain Australia's wartime reputation. They demonstrate the extraordinary courage, resilience, stoic humour, personal heroism and sacrifice that created the mythology of the Aussie 'digger' - the soldiers, sailors, nurses and flyers who did things their own way and earned the undying respect of both their allies and their enemies.