Artuccino's Resident Historian
Granville Allen Mawer, historian, is the author of several books (details listed below). His book Ahab's Trade was short listed for the Queensland Premier's History Prize 2000 and the NSW Premier's History Prize 2001. He is a contributor to the Australian Dictionary of Biography and sometime reviewer of maritime books for The Times Literary Supplement. His most recently published work is Diary of a Spitfire Pilot, over the English Channel and Over Darwin (Rosenberg Publishing 2011).
Granville Allen Mawer is the author of:
- Diary of a Spitfire Pilot:
over the English Channel & Over Darwin (Rosenberg Publ. 2011)
- Fast Company:
the story of the clipper ship Walter Hood (Plainwords Press, 1994)
- Most Perfectly Safe:
a study of convict shipwrecks 1833-42 (Allen and Unwin, 1997)
- Ahab's Trade:
a history of South Seas whaling (Allen and Unwin, 1999)
short listed for the Queensland Premier's History Prize 2000 and the NSW Premier's History Prize 2001.
- The Life & Legend of Jack Doolan
The Wild Colonial Boy
(Mulini Press, 2004)
- South By Northwest:
The Magnetic Crusade and the Contest for Antarctica (Wakefield Press, 2006)
Details of his most recent publications are listed below:
Diary of a Spitfire Pilot
over the English Channel and Over Darwin
After many years of holding on to the precious, very personal, war time diaries of his father, Granville Allen Mawer has taken the courageous step of publishing them in the spirit of historical importance.
More . . .
South by Northwest
The Magnetic Crusade and the Contest for Antarctica
"For many, Antarctic history begins and ends with
the race between Scott and Amundsen for the geographic south pole but
they were late to the start and only briefly on the course. By then, another
polar race had already been in progress for seventy years, and it would
continue for even longer. That race, for the South Magnetic Pole, was
a marathon rather than a sprint and its starting point was suitably distant
from Antarctica, in the ice of the fabled Northwest Passage."
More . . .
Most Perfectly Safe
The Convict Shipwreck Disasters of 1833 to 1842
"If you had to sail to Australia in the early
nineteen century there were worse ways to travel than being transported
as a convict. Your living conditions were better than those of the sailors
who manned your ship. Discipline was harsher for the troops who guarded
you. And, disease and mutiny apart, it was as the Admiralty claimed, 'most
perfectly safe'. Until 1833. . ."
More . . .
FAST COMPANY
The lively times and untimely end of the clipper ship
Walter Hood 1852-1870
This book tells the story of one of the thousands
of sailing ships that for more than sixty years were European Australia's
only link with "home" and for even longer sustained the infant
colonies and carried their products to the world. "
More . . .
The Devil's Gambit - BOOK 1
Book 1 of Allen's, as yet, unpublished work is here for you to
read and enjoy, free of advertising and charges.
In the last days of World War Two a signal from a long
lost gypsy agent in Germany prompts the British Secret Service to parachute
an officer in to re-establish contact. Jonathon Smith finds himself in
a web of intrigue as the Third Reich crumbles, taking old loyalties with
it. Everyone is looking for a way out. Everyone, that is except Adolf
Hitler, and who can move if he will not?
Read the unpublished manuscript
here at Artuccino, FREE.
More . . .
Ahab's Trade
A Saga of South Seas Whaling
Gladiator one minute, galley slave the next.
Danger and abuse, excitement and tedium, these were the lot of open boat
whalemen in the South Seas for more than two centuries. By the end of
those centuries of struggle and adversity they had explored and exploited
every corner of the world's oceans in the hunt for the spermaceti whale,
and charted much of them to boot.
More . . .
Buy the Book at Amazon.com
The Ballad of Jack Doolan
the Wild Colonial Boy
Re-written by Granville Allen Mawer
A note from the Author: The Wild Colonial Boy is generally
believed to be either a wholly fictional character orvery loosely based
on Bold Jack Donohoe, a convict bushranger of the 1820s.There was, however,
a juvenile bushranger named Jack Doolan born, as the song says, in Castlemaine
(Victoria). .
More . . .
Read more
about Granville Allen Mawer's book
at the Australian Government's National Center for
History Education web site