The fatal lure of politics

After many years of scholarship, teaching in the academy, and activism, colleague Terry Irving is putting together what he envisages being the definitive account of the life and politics of Australianborn leftist archaeologist and prehistorian Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957). Best known in Australia for his pioneering, seminal critical account of the Australian labour movement in and out of Parliament, How Labour Governs (1923), Childe is more widely known internationally for his pioneering work in prehistory, author of 26 books on archaeology and history, and at the time of his suicide in 1957 in the Blue Mountains (NSW), probably Australia’s most translated author.