Manning Clark & the Muses

Abstract

The controversy Manning Clark attracted in his lifetime has carried over into posthumous attacks on his reputation. In 1993 his former publisher Peter Ryan produced an extraordinary denunciation. In 1996 the Brisbane Courier-Mail published an eight-page feature alleging that Clark had been awarded the Order of Lenin for services as a Soviet agent. In his Australia Day speech of 2006 the prime minister blamed him for propagating the black armband view of Australian history. Contrary to these allegations, Clark was not an apologist for the left: indeed, as he embarked on his life’s work that resulted in the six-volume History of Australia he specifically rejected the radical view of the national history. Hence the response to the first volume from Brian Fitzpatrick, the leading radical historian: ’may all the muses except Clio bless him’. In this lecture Professor Stuart Macintyre explores Manning Clark’s relations with Clio (the Muse of History) and other muses.