(1) 'Memory Hold-The-Door'. -- John Buchan, 1940, in the book of the same name. (2) 'It is the basis of the desire of any group of human beings to have a place of their own, a place which gives them reality, presence, power of living, which feeds them body and soul.' -- Paul Tillich, Theory of Culture, 1959. (3) 'I urge my readers, my generation, to gain insights into life's conflicts, to interpret their community.' -- Jyrki Kiskinen, writing in 1996. These mottoes should alert us all to the too oft-forgotten or ignored fact that, as we age, certain early experiences not written down in those moments, can indeed be rebuilt out of memory into reflective and comforting narratives. My paper will both follow, or reflect on, the theory of personal memory and it will outline a specific pattern of culture which I have been able to re-create.

The discipline area of 'English' at New England has gone through many phases, from its inception as: a joint Department with Classics; for many years a part-time function as the centre for most performed (and studied) University drama; as one of the most heavily language-weighted, and language-productive English departments in the country; as the third largest English Department in Australia; as the University's largest department in total undergraduate numbers; or, later, the Faculty's largest postgraduate area; since amalgamation in 1989, as a joint department of English and Communication Studies, with, for a time, an outreach teaching arm at Coffs Harbour; and now as part of the recently constituted School of English, Communication and Theatre. These phases have been accompanied by several cramped physical locations - initially in 'Booloominbah', when linked with Classics; variously in the old Study Block and the Belshaw Building, but with its head still in 'Booloominbah'; as a foundation department there occupying (south) Milton building; and, from 1969 in the main Faculty Building on the Lower Ground floor. It has had in its life: six full professors, for a time filling its 1960s-1970s establishment of two of them; in all, eight associate professors; and once a total staff body of nearly 30. Its living postgraduates make up more than SOD, while the (former) undergraduate body, now numbering thousands, has changed very considerably over time in age composition and purpose for studying, at the point when they commenced study here.

This book is not a register of the members year by year, still less a chronicle by segments of time. Rather is it a reflective but also a personally challenging compilation, one assembled with the help of alumni and, in many cases, their writings - both public and private - to mark a defiant milestone and anniversary rather than a history of a steadily ongoing University College. It was one, so vibrantly achieving for 40 years and then suspended - if not terminated - inthe material sense in more recent years. Since the alumni did not offer written contributions in any quantity, and as it had been the intention that this book should endeavour to characterize our identity, in actuality it gives a series of highly evocative impressions from the premier University residential institutionin Armidale. And so the commemorative purpose has been followed by theassembling of a series of reports and reflections on facets of the first fully residential University College on campus in rural New South Wales, Wright in Armidale, initially for men and later for both men and women.As a College - in its heyday - it did much, to justify the faith of the innumerable benefactors to the fledgling tertiary institution, and also the far-sighted and idealistic vision of that compassionate educationalist, Dr Robert Madgwick, in office at the time of the supportive initial planning and for the first two strenuous but hugely satisfying masterships. As a document of record, the book also tells us much about Australian society in the second half of the twentieth century, from migration, a wider educational franchise and about concern for the strength of mind and sense of the self so desirable in the young adults in this nation.

This hugely stimulating volume of interdisciplinary richness is concerned to take the reader through the complex tale of how the Victorians, notably historians and artists of various media, endeavoured to 'reinvent' the Italian Renaissance. Beginning with the seminal notions of the earlier cultural dawn/Renaissance by Jules Michelet in 1855 and Jacob Burckhardt in 1860, Dr. Fraser argues most persuasively that the named continental writers, to whom the work of making the particular grand images is customarily ascribed, were to some extent preceded in Britain by many writers, artists, critics, and historians who had already begun the task influenced by 'specifically British cultural values and conditions'. Of enormous importance here was the massive growth of interest in Italian Renaissance history and art, due in particular to the increase in gallery exhibitions from mid-century and to the positive contribution from 1849 of the publications of the London-based Arundel Society or 'Society for promoting the knowledge of Art'.

This is either a fascinating - or a deeply frustrating collection for the travelled /'exiled' reader - being a set of some 16 [separately paginated] essays. Its impetus and source come alike from the Australian Menzies Centre, in London, one based at 'the heart of things' - or is it a return to the Colonial Office and other modes of population for the Australian continent? But this last is a digression. Of course, the collection comes from the Australian [return] cultural bridgehead at Kings College, University of London. And the endpapers tell us, very helpfully, that this ebook belongs in a Monash University sequence - one already to be seen to be: - looking at 'Australians in Italy'; - considering perspectives on the ever more significant genre of cartooning; - treating of historical settlement systems; - discovering/ writing the obituary for our nation's rural ideals; - treating of the 21st century's possible learning discourses; - looking at transport and social disadvantage in Australian communities; - or the matter of secular art .../ but also of its 'sacramental' roots. Thus the whole series - or what is so far available - is clearly intended to bookend a period and so to be a fin de siecle type of survey and sweep of its changing mental climates, perhaps, as in similar and climacteric British publication efforts.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mr. A.C.M. Howard, the Deputy Director of the University of New England Department then styled 'Adult Education', made a collection of potential research material, some 229 plays which had been written in the period 1920 to 1955. This collection is housed in the Dixson Library of the University. While the plays were generally performed but not published in an accepted format, they remained largely unknown. As he explained in the 'Preface' to the original catalogue, - 'Australian Plays in Manuscript: a check list of the Campbell Howard collection held in the University of New England Library', edited by S.M. Apted and published in 1968, by the University of New England Library, - A.C.M. Howard was concerned to collect "for historians of Australian drama and literature, some of the basic data", explaining that "'An Australian play', for my purpose, meant a play written by someone who by birth or residence was an Australian" (op cit, p. 4). The standard set for inclusion in the collection was that they had been performed by a reputable company and reviewed by a responsible critic, or by an unnamed critic in a reputable journal - in some cases reference being given to a particular review on the copy of the play. Many of the plays were prizewinners in various competitions.

In 1979 I saw the film, 'The Deer Hunter'. As long as I can remember, I've had great personal difficulty with violence in any shape or form and this movie was extremely violent, based in large measure on the effect of the Vietnam War on a group of American friends. An early scene in the movie saw the ominous 'thud, thud, thud' of several helicopters coming through the jungle clearing, and the sound reverberated through my being. It was unnerving, frightening, terrifying and this was the mere suggestion of things to come. The initial impulse was to walk out of the theatre there and then, but I forced myself to stay believing that I had some sort of duty to know something of the horrors of war. This is what it's like for many 'baby boomers'. They have had no experience of war. At the conclusion of the movie I walked back outside into busy George Street, into the brilliant Sydney sunshine, trembling inwardly and shaking outwardly, incredulous that the city was carrying on regardless and quite oblivious to my fractured psyche. How on earth was it for the actual people who had experienced such terror? Barry Heard's book 'Well Done, Those Men', has a similar profound effect on those who read it.

At first sight this book might appear to have little to offer to interest the folklorist, yet this is very far from being the case. The intention is a survey of the Australian vocabulary in the colonizing period and so a categorization of that lexis. This last process very speedily establishes that the Australian has not been so extraordinarily inventive in vocabulary nor yet has he had to depend so much on 'slang', both of which suppositions have been a matter of cultural dogma for several generations. Dr Ramson's personal contribution to linguistic studies is a demonstration that many of the nineteenth-century words, unfamiliar to past and present speakers of Standard British English, had long histories of use in less refined circles, in the slang of the lower class or in regional dialect vocabularies. His starting point has been the obvious one (hitherto not observed by any scholar) of assuming the speech community was derivative, of ascertaining the processes whereby a population almost exclusively of British descent varied an inherited language. Although the treatment is not exhaustive, and proceeds at the ambling pace of George H. McKnight's 'Modern English in the Making' (1928), the book is stimulating and serves as a most valuable corrective of perspective.

A number of elegantly presented volumes of highly individualistic poetry by Edwin Wilson (b. 1942) have been published over [almost the last thirty] years. They have each contained representative selections of his verse, always carefully ordered and contrasted, the poems themselves having often appeared in earlier or completed form in such literary periodicals as 'Poetry Australia', or environmentally concerned journals such as 'Habitat Australia' or 'Rainforest Australia'. These latter outlets were totally appropriate for much of his work, since many of the often botanically focused poems had been illustrated most appropriately by the facing delicate, evocative and lyrical pencil drawings of Elizabeth McAlpine.

The work of the part-French Australian scholar, Peter Gilet covers many folkloric fields - the autobiographic/white Australian folk life; the Aboriginal and (the comparative) classificatory; the structuralism; and the theory of both literature and film. It has already been recognized worldwide.