David Day (historian)


David Andrew Day is an Australian historian, academic and author.

Academic career

The son of a weather forecaster with Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, Day grew up in Melbourne and Charleville, Queensland before commencing accounting studies in which he performed poorly owing to his political activity, which included protesting against Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War.
After a short period of work, Day returned to his studies and graduated with first-class Honours in History and Political Science from the University of Melbourne and was awarded a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
Day has been a Junior Research Fellow at Clare College in Cambridge, founding head of History and Political Science at Bond University, official historian of the Australian Customs Service, Keith Cameron Professor of Australian History at University College Dublin, and Professor of Australian Studies at the University of Tokyo. He is currently an Honorary Associate in the History Program at LaTrobe University in Melbourne.

Career as an author

Day has written widely on Australian history and the history of the Second World War. Among his many books are Menzies and Churchill at War and a two-volume study of Anglo-Australian relations during the Second World War. His prize-winning history of Australia, Claiming a Continent, won the prestigious non-fiction prize in the 1998 South Australian Festival Awards for Literature. An earlier book, Smugglers and Sailors, was shortlisted by the Fellowship of Australian Writers for its Book of the Year Award. John Curtin: A Life was shortlisted for the 2000 NSW Premier's Literary Awards' Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction.

Published works

Sole author