General Press Release No. 257 (June 2003)

Rev. John West Book launch

The Australian Press Council is hosting the Sydney launch of The Usefulness of John West: Dissent and Difference in the Australian Colonies, a history written by Patricia Fitzgerald Ratcliff.

The launch will be held in the Dixson Room of the NSW State Library, at 6pm on Wednesday 18 June 2003. Paul Brunton, the Mitchell Library's senior curator, will launch the book. The public is invited and admission is free.

Patricia Ratcliff is a founder of the Launceston Historical Society and of the annual Examiner-John West Memorial Lecture. She edited John West's Union of the Colonies: Essays on Federation, written under the pseudonym of John Adams. She was a public member of the Australian Press Council for nine years.

The subject of the book, the Rev. John West, was one of the most influential newspapermen in colonial Australia. A religious dissenter who fought for the separation of Church and State, Federation and colonial independence, he helped found The Launceston Examiner and was the first 'Editor' of The Sydney Morning Herald, a position he held for nearly twenty years.

Copies of the book will be available at the launch and the author has agreed to sign copies for those attending.

[ return to top ]