Monday 5 March 2007

Manning Clark, author of a magisterial six-volume history of Australia, takes a caning from David Marr in The Sydney Morning Herald. Biographer Mark McKenna, "a fellow in history at Sydney University", reports that Clark was not present on the day of Kristallnacht, as he had asserted frequently. In fact "It was Dymphna Lodewyckx, not Manning Clark, who witnessed the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht," says McKenna.

Marr dedicates three pages to this exclusive. Just imagine what the reaction would have been if The Australian, which is far more right-wing than The Herald, had broken the story. Clark was a committed socialist.

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