Academic Background and Research Interests
BA, MA Hons Sydney, PhD Cambridge, FAHA, FASSA
I did my first undergraduate (1965) and Hons. MA (1967) at the University of Sydney, then a PhD at Cambridge, St John’s College (1971). I taught at Sydney from 1969 to 1986, the University of Western Australia from 1987 to 2011 and Reading University from 2007-2011 (shared with UWA). I have been a Visiting Fellow at St. John’s College and Clare Hall, Cambridge, Balliol and All Souls Colleges in Oxford. I was also a Visiting Professor at Trento University in Italy.
My most recent book is Politics, murder and love in an Italian family: the Amendolas in an age of totalitarianisms (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Other Interests
I play golf (very badly) at North Oxford and go to the theatre whenever I can. My daughter is a professor of criminology (St. Cross College) and I have two granddaughters, one of which painted the portrait of me above. I defect to Italy often.
Additional Information
In 2002, I was accorded the Australian Centenary Medal ‘for services to history and the humanities’.
With Colin Haydon and others and under the leadership of Felicity Heal, I was part of the team that produced the new history of Jesus College for its 450th anniversary.
Publications
Books since attached to Jesus College in 2011:
- Whispering city: Rome and its histories, (Yale University Press, London and New Haven, 2011).
- (with Lindsay Stade and Stan Bell) From humble beginnings: the Mount Lawley Golf Club Perth Western Australia, (Inglewood: MLGC, 2011).
- Italian Venice: a history (Yale University Press, London and New Haven, 2014) (paperback edition, 2015).
- (with Joe Maiolo, eds.), vol. II (Politics and ideology) of The Cambridge History of the Second World War (3 vols.) Cambridge University Press, 2015 (paperback edition, 2017).
- Claretta: Mussolini’s last lover (Yale University Press, London and New Haven, 2017; paperback edition, 2021). Italian translation Claretta: l’ultima amante (LEG: Gorizia, 2019).
- Mussolini and the eclipse of Italian Fascism: from dictatorship to populism, (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021).
- Politics, murder and love in an Italian family: the Amendolas in an age of totalitarianisms (Cambridge University Press, 2023).