History Trust of South Australia –
Wakefield Press History Initiative
Telling South Australia's Tales
then & now
Wakefield Press has been sharing stories of South Australia's colourful history for many decades. Our books are an increasingly important and enduring record of this small state, and this is something we want to continue. The difficult fact of history publishing is that it is rarely viable without financial support.
Thanks to our new partnership with the History Trust of South Australia, you can now make a tax-deductible donation towards approved Wakefield Press history projects, to be part of history and help us continue to tell South Australia’s tales. Donors will have the option to be acknowledged by name in the book for their contribution or to remain anonymous.
See below for a selection of the current projects eligible for donations, including upcoming releases and reprints.
Donations of any amount can be made via the History Trust of South Australia website.
Donations over two dollars are tax-deductible and all donations (minus a three per cent transaction fee) will be remitted to Wakefield Press for the approved project. Have a specific project you want to make a reality, or an interest in seeing a reprint of one of our titles? Get in touch with us for more information.
South Australian School of Art: 150 years shaping South Australian visual arts and culture
Dr Jenny Aland
This forthcoming book tells the story of the ways in which the South Australian School of Art, as the oldest continuously operating art school in Australia, has shaped this state's visual arts and culture over the past one hundred and fifty years.
The book also features some 180 images of art works created by staff and/or students (many with distinguished international careers), photographs, diagrams and other memorabilia, all of which help to illuminate the ways in which individuals at the School and others have both influenced and shaped the cultural and artistic life of our community.
Full Disclosure: An autobiography
Peter J. Duncan
Peter Duncan was the reforming Attorney-General to the South Australian Premier, Don Dunstan. He was a Minister in the Hawke government and Parliamentary Secretary to the Attorney-General in the Keating Government, making him one of the very few in Australian history to successfully move from the State legislature to Federal Parliament and to occupy Ministerial positions in both jurisdictions.
Full Disclosure, volume one of Peter Duncan's forthcoming frank, fearless and always entertaining political autobiography, gives us a ringside seat to politics as practised over decades of change. It takes us to the end of Duncan's parliamentary career, illuminates what successive Premiers and Prime Ministers were really like and what happened behind closed doors. It is up front and personal, telling Peter Duncan's own story from childhood in the 1940s and 1950s, to the defeat of the Keating Government.
This is a brutally honest autobiography that paints a portrait of an imperfect man whose many achievements in the cause of a more progressive state and nation must be remembered.
Peter Duncan's Private Members Bill in the South Australian parliament (1973-1975) was the first in the Westminster system, world-wide, to treat homosexuals and heterosexuals equally, encouraging former High Court Judge, Justice Michael Kirby, to describe him as 'the father of gay law reform in Australia'.
He confronted Australia's leading organised crime figure Abe Saffron and closed the Saffron empire in South Australia removing his corrupting influence from the State.
He reformed not only laws but legal practice and agencies. An activist Minister and local member, Peter was involved in early environmental law reform including the victory over the damming of the Franklin River in Tasmania. A lawyer himself, he set up a successful legal practice in Adelaide that still bears his name. He played an important role in saving the youngest of the Bali Nine (the teenage drug mule Scott Rush) from the firing squad.
With its broad canvas, attention to detail and insightful anecdotes, Peter Duncan's no-holds-barred Full Disclosure is funny, sad, informative, idiosyncratically Australian and unambiguously authentic. A gripping read!
You can help to get this classic back in print:
The Wakefield Companion to South Australian History
Edited by Wilfrid Prest, Kerrie Round and Carol Fort
This flagship book was published in 2001. As well as a comprehensive A to Z of South Australian history, the Companion includes a chronology and lists of prominent individuals – the result of work by over 200 contributors.
'The Wakefield Companion to South Australian History is likely to become the standard reference on the state's history, and an indispensable aid to students, journalists, local historians and South Australian patriots.' – Graeme Davison, Monash University
