Carmen Callil: Oh Happy Day

<div>My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the publisher and historian Carmen Callil, whose new book <em>Oh Happy Day: Those Times and These Times</em>, tells the story of how her 18th-century ancestors were transported to Australia. She uses their story as a window into a densely imagined account of English and Aussie social history, and of the darker side of empire. She tells me why the Industrial Revolution wasn’t always a good thing, why it isn’t over the top to compare the British state apparatus to the Nazis - but also about her own childhood in Melbourne and why as a fervent anti-imperialist she accepted a Damehood.</div>