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'A new and radically different biography of the Australian-born archaeologist and prehistorian, Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957). In his early life he was active in the Australian labour movement and wrote How Labour Governs (1923), the world’s first study of parliamentary socialism. At the end of the First World War he decided to pursue a life of scholarship to 'escape the fatal lure’ of politics and Australian labour’s ‘politicalism’, his term for its misguided emphasis on parliamentary representation.
'In Britain, with the publication of The Dawn of European Civilisation (1925) he began a career that would establish him as preeminent in his field and one of the most distinguished scholars of the mid-twentieth century. At the same time, his aim was to ‘democratise archaeology’, to involve people in its practice and to reveal to them What Happened in History (1942), the title of his most popular book. It sold 300,00 copies in its first 15 years.
'Politics continued to lure him, and for forty years the security services of Britain and Australia continued to spy on him. He supported Russia’s ‘grand and hopeful experiment’ and opposed the rise of fascism. His Australian background reinforced his hatred of colonialism and imperialism. Politics was also implicated in his death. There is a direct line between Childe's early radicalism and his final - and fatal - political act in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. This is a book about the central place of socialist politics in his life, and his contribution to the theory of history that this politics entailed.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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[Review] The Fatal Lure of Politics: The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 54 no. 1 2023; (p. 160-161)
— Review of The Fatal Lure of Politics : The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe 2020 single work biography'Vere Gordon Childe remains, after a century, Australia’s greatest archaeological expatriate. During the interwar period and into the 1960s he played a seminal role in crafting a coherent pan-European narrative of prehistoric cultural change from what had largely been several centuries of localised antiquarian object collecting. He not only connected local manifestations of archaeological evidence into cultural units that extended beyond national boundaries but was able to arrange them in time, providing a structure in which cultural successions and ethnic change could be examined as forming the evolving human map of Europe and the Middle East that emerged with the earliest historical records.' (Introduction)
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Terry Irving on an Unlikely ‘Celebrity of the Left’
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: History Australia , vol. 18 no. 4 2021; (p. 894-895)
— Review of The Fatal Lure of Politics : The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe 2020 single work biography'A radical polymath himself, Jack Lindsay recalled Vere Gordon Childe as ‘a bubble-pricker’ yet retained an affectionate regard for this deeply enigmatic man. ‘He was the most detached person I knew’, Lindsay continued, ‘and yet one felt all the while there was a warm core to his gently spoken and deadly sarcasm’ (124). Terry Irving’s biography, similarly, gently works its way around Childe, a figure who demands a measure of introspection as well as a breadth of scholarly investment from those seeking to understand and ‘place’ him.' (Introduction)
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Terry Irving : The Fatal Lure of Politics: The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Newtown Review of Books , August 2020;
— Review of The Fatal Lure of Politics : The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe 2020 single work biography'Terry Irving charts the politics of early twentieth century Australia through the life of writer and polymath Vere Gordon Childe.'
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'Green Shirt Just Visible' : A Restless Marxist and Archaeologist
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 423 2020; (p. 26-27)
— Review of The Fatal Lure of Politics : The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe 2020 single work biography 'A young Australian radical, who finds academic success later in life, struggles with an inexorable question: what is the relationship between these two worlds — the activist and the scholar? This question animated the life of Vere Gordon Childe, the Australian Marxist and intellectual whose The Dawn of European Civilization (1925) helped establish modern archaeology, as it has his most recent biographer, activist and labour historian Terry Irving, whose Class Structure in Australian History (1981, with Raewyn Connell) remains a key text.' (Introduction)
-
'Green Shirt Just Visible' : A Restless Marxist and Archaeologist
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 423 2020; (p. 26-27)
— Review of The Fatal Lure of Politics : The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe 2020 single work biography 'A young Australian radical, who finds academic success later in life, struggles with an inexorable question: what is the relationship between these two worlds — the activist and the scholar? This question animated the life of Vere Gordon Childe, the Australian Marxist and intellectual whose The Dawn of European Civilization (1925) helped establish modern archaeology, as it has his most recent biographer, activist and labour historian Terry Irving, whose Class Structure in Australian History (1981, with Raewyn Connell) remains a key text.' (Introduction)
-
Terry Irving : The Fatal Lure of Politics: The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Newtown Review of Books , August 2020;
— Review of The Fatal Lure of Politics : The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe 2020 single work biography'Terry Irving charts the politics of early twentieth century Australia through the life of writer and polymath Vere Gordon Childe.'
-
Terry Irving on an Unlikely ‘Celebrity of the Left’
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: History Australia , vol. 18 no. 4 2021; (p. 894-895)
— Review of The Fatal Lure of Politics : The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe 2020 single work biography'A radical polymath himself, Jack Lindsay recalled Vere Gordon Childe as ‘a bubble-pricker’ yet retained an affectionate regard for this deeply enigmatic man. ‘He was the most detached person I knew’, Lindsay continued, ‘and yet one felt all the while there was a warm core to his gently spoken and deadly sarcasm’ (124). Terry Irving’s biography, similarly, gently works its way around Childe, a figure who demands a measure of introspection as well as a breadth of scholarly investment from those seeking to understand and ‘place’ him.' (Introduction)
-
[Review] The Fatal Lure of Politics: The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 54 no. 1 2023; (p. 160-161)
— Review of The Fatal Lure of Politics : The Life and Thought of Vere Gordon Childe 2020 single work biography'Vere Gordon Childe remains, after a century, Australia’s greatest archaeological expatriate. During the interwar period and into the 1960s he played a seminal role in crafting a coherent pan-European narrative of prehistoric cultural change from what had largely been several centuries of localised antiquarian object collecting. He not only connected local manifestations of archaeological evidence into cultural units that extended beyond national boundaries but was able to arrange them in time, providing a structure in which cultural successions and ethnic change could be examined as forming the evolving human map of Europe and the Middle East that emerged with the earliest historical records.' (Introduction)
