The Last of the Queen's Men: Barry Humphries' Australian Theatre of Empire

Abstract

This lecture provides a detailed analysis of the way in which the world-renowned Australian satirist Barry Humphries created a series of performances in a variety of genres and modes that lampooned the idea of Empire and Britishness over a 30-year period, with origins in the Menzies era, and evolving through to Thatcher's Britain and beyond. The Keith Cameron Lecture in Australian Studies is an invited public lecture delivered annually by a distinguished international scholar at the School of History and Archives, University College, Dublin. A large audience of students and staff of University College Dublin, and the Australian Ambassador to Ireland, attended the lecture on 30 September 2009. This lecture took place in conjunction with the James Joyce award given to Barry Humphries on the same day by students of the Literary and Historical Society of UCD.