RAHS Day Lecture – A.D. Hope: A Poet in History

Event Date & Time: Wednesday, 5 August 2026 @ 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm

Event Location: History House, 133 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000 (hybrid)

Cost: Free

Event Description:

The poet Alec Derwent Hope (1907–2000) lived for all but seven years of the twentieth century. He was acutely aware of the changes in technology over his lifetime, moving from the horse-and-cart days of his childhood to seeing the live television relay of a rocket ship reaching the moon on his sixty-second birthday. This paper will trace the way his poetry responded to change and his growing concern about the way that humans destroy the world around them.

About the speaker:

Dr Susan Lever OAM taught literature for many years at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, and she is the author and editor of several books, including A Question of Commitment: Australian Literature in the Twenty Years after the War. She became a friend of Alec Hope in the 1980s when she taught at the Australian National University.