In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2025 conference entitled ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nation’. This third episode features David Furse-Roberts's paper 'A Twentieth Century Australian Whig: Robert Menzies and the Nineteenth Century British Liberal Tradition', Charles Richardson's paper 'Menzies, Burkean liberal or Burkean conservative?', Alex McDermott's paper 'When Menzies met Baldwin: Australian and English conservatism, difference and convergence', & Kit Kowol's paper 'Australia in the post-war British Conservative Political Imagination'.

David Furse-Roberts presently works as a speechwriter and researcher for a Federal Senator. He holds a PhD in history from the University of NSW and is the author of God and Menzies (2021). He is also the editor of Howard: The Art of Persuasion (2018) and Menzies: The Forgotten Speeches (2017). Since joining the MRC in 2016, he has written for the ABC, Quadrant, Spectator Australia and other publications on the history and contemporary relevance of liberalism in Australia. This has covered such topics as the founding philosophy of Robert Menzies, the remarkable life of Prime Minister John Gorton and the rich legacy of John Howard. David also comments on topical issues such as free speech and education from a conservative and liberal perspective.

Charles Richardson has a law degree from Melbourne University and a PhD from Rutgers University, specialising in ethics and political philosophy. He has worked in a variety of positions in government and politics, and is a former director of Above Quota Elections Pty Ltd. His work has appeared in numerous publications, and he has been featured as a commentator in newspapers, radio, and television. Since 2012 he has written on world politics at his blog, The World is Not Enough, and does periodic consulting work on electoral matters. His research interests include the history of liberal democratic structures and the comparative study of European party systems.

Alex McDermott is a Curator and Fellow at the Robert Menzies Institute. He is an author, historian and Executive Producer. He was Historical Curator for the “Democracy DNA” exhibition (2022) at the Museum of Australian Democracy, authored Australian History For Dummies (2022) and various commissioned histories which explore the crucial role played by civic associations in Australia’s democratic history, such as Of no personal influence: how people of common enterprise unexpectedly shaped Australia (2015) to mark the 175th anniversary of Australian Unity. Across more than two decades as public historian he has contributed his expertise to Screen Australia, State Library of Victoria, La Trobe University, the Institute of Public Affairs, Channel 7, SBS, ABC, Sky News Documentaries, and many other organisations.

Kit Kowol received his DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford in 2014. He subsequently taught at Oxford and at King’s College London where he was an Early Career Development Fellow in Modern British History. His first book, Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill and the Second World War was published by Oxford University Press in 2024. He now lives in Brisbane where he works for the Queensland Government.

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In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2025 conference entitled ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nations’. This second episode features Lee Rippon's paper 'Britain, Australia, the Empire and prisoner of war diplomacy, 1939–1942', Wayne Reynolds's paper 'Navigating Imperial Overstretch east of Suez: Menzies and Australian foreign and defence policies 1935–1965, & Sue Thompson's paper 'Menzies’s Balancing Act in Southeast Asian Security'.

Lee Rippon is an academic status holder at Flinders University and works as a historian in the Commemorative Events Branch of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. She is the author of the book Australia’s Forgotten Soldiers in the Empire, 1939–1945: Prisoners of War, International Diplomacy and Australian Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). Currently, Lee is researching her second monograph, which investigates Australians’ roles in the Special Operations Executive and MI9 in Europe during the Second World War.

Wayne Reynolds is an Hon Associate Professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He has worked on the history of Australian defence and foreign affairs with a focus on nuclear policy. Recent works include Australia and the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty 1945–1974 (Canberra: DFAT, 2013); ‘An Astute Choice: Anglo-Australian Cooperation on Nuclear Submarines in Historical Perspective’, Security Challenges, December 2013; ‘Whatever Happened to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, December 2023. Forthcoming works include a book chapter on Australia in The Cambridge History of the Nuclear Age (2026); Manuscript Australia and Global Power 1756–2021.

Sue Thompson is an Associate Professor at the ANU National Security College and current Secretary of the Britain and the World Society. Her research specialisation examines the history of regional cooperation in Southeast Asia during the Cold War with a focus on foreign and defence policy influences in the post-war evolution of Southeast Asian regionalism. She is the author of The United States and Southeast Asian Regionalism: Collective Security and Economic Development, 1945–75 and British Military Withdrawal from Southeast Asia and the Rise of Regional Cooperation, 1964–1973.

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In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2025 conference entitled ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nation’. This first episode features the keynote address delivered by Martin Farr, Josh Woodward's paper 'Enlarged horizons and excited imagination: Rereading Robert Menzies’s 1935 overseas diary', & David Lee's paper 'Menzies and Imperial Unity, 1934–1942'.

Martin Farr teaches contemporary history at Newcastle University (UK). His research interests centre on British politics and public life, foreign policy, and foreign relations. He has published on politics and strategy in the two world wars, political life-writing, US-UK relations, tourism, and popular culture. He is currently writing Margaret Thatcher’s World, an international history of Thatcherism. He heads Britain and the World, with its annual conference, book series, and peer-reviewed journal.

Joshua Woodward is an Australian environmental historian whose research explores representations of nature in tourist advertising. He has published several articles on the tourist promotion of Australian national parks and their emergence as important sites of the settler-nation. He completed his Masters at the University of Western Australia, where he was the 2019 recipient of the Frank Broeze scholarship. Josh will complete his PhD on twentieth century Australian tourist advertising at the Australian National University in 2025.

David Lee is an Associate Professor in history in the University of New South Wales, Canberra. He has published widely on Australian history in the twentieth century. His most recent books are Australia and the World: International Relations and Global Events since Federation (Circa, 2022) and John Curtin (Connor Court, 2022). He is also author of The Second Rush: Mining and the Transformation of Australia (Connor Court, 2016) and Stanley Melbourne Bruce: Australian Internationalist (Bloomsbury, 2010). He is Chair of the Commonwealth Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and Cabinet Historian of the National Archives of Australia. Current projects are a history of the Australian Department of Trade and its Antecedent Agencies, 1941–87; a history of Australian independence; Governance During the Howard Era, 1996–2007; a biography of JB Chifley; and an edited volume, Conduits of War: Dominion Governors and Governors-General during the Great War.

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