GT223: Political Theory from Plato to Machiavelli

This was the subject I most definitely should not have been doing in second semester 1989, when I had little time for one subject and idiotically had signed up for two.

I don’t think this was anyone’s idea of a good time. The notes were written by Dr N.S. Thornton (Sigrid’s father) but the course was meant to be taken by a Dr E.N. Allen. I can find no trace of his CV on the web but he was absent on sick leave anyway and Ian Cook, who I suspect was at the time a PhD student, was called in to replace him. Cook went on to a stellar career in his area moving to Murdoch University and being responsible for numerous books and journal articles.  You can catch up on his career here.

In 1989 however, the poor bastard was thrown into looking after this unloved external course. This meant having to read my under researched, poorly argued essays. What really annoyed him however was my bloody awful word processor (Commodore 64 style) that was frankly hard to read. His marginal notes reveal a certain degree of exasperation when he wonders if I’ve ever heard of double spacing!

I was in no position at the time to correct this as we were actually rather short of money and seriously in debt. A good computer and printer was not immediately affordable and I don’t think I had the nerve to ask my poor wife to start typing for me again. His pain may have pushed me to get a second hand computer from my brother and a half decent dot matrix printer not long after this fiasco.

The only thing this course did tell me that was that the political thinkers that I thought interesting were religious writers and that set me off in following years to complete a major in Studies in Religion. But never more than one subject at a time.