Geoffrey Blainey is often described as Australia's greatest livinghistorian, a writer whose prolific output includes such iconic books about thecountry's past as The Tyranny of Distanceand Triumph of the Nomads.

However, Blainey has also been a controversial figure. His 1984comments about Asian immigration triggered a major political controversy. Inturn, the reaction of his critics raised fundamental questions about freedom ofspeech and set the scene for the 'history wars' fought out in Australia overthe past three decades.

Many academic historians were amongst Blainey's critics. After1984, Blainey became stereotyped as a 'conservative historian' and thus outsidethe bounds of academic history, yet much of Blainey's historical writing, bothin method and outlook, has been far from conservative.

GeoffreyBlainey: Writer, Historian, Controversialist challengessimplistic descriptions of Blainey's work. It sheds an important light not juston Blainey's career, but also on the past and present practice of history inAustralia.