Australian Dictionary of Biography

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Award of ADB Medal to Peter Howell for long and distinguished service (2016)

Citation

Dr Peter Howell’s contribution to the South Australia Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography spans more than four decades. He has written thirty-nine ADB articles: the first on educationalist Thomas Arnold was commissioned in 1961 and appeared in volume 1, and his most recent, on clergyman and bioethicist Daniel Overduin, was published in 2016 on the day of the 70th ADB Editorial Board meeting.  He has a number of commissions ongoing.  Peter has had a special interest in the successive holders of the vice-regal office in South Australia and has written entries on nine governors and two vice-regal wives. His lengthy entry on Sir Thomas Playford, premier of South Australia from 1938 to 1965, is a magisterial survey. Some of his entries in the ADB have led to longer articles, published mostly in the Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia. His third book, The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 1833-1876, published in 1979, is still acknowledged as a ‘classic’, and his latest book South Australia and Federation, published in 2002, is a lively account of the history of the state from Federation to the outbreak of the First World War. Peter’s articles are meticulously researched, insightful and written in his crisp and vigorous style. 

When Peter arrived in Adelaide to take up a lectureship at the recently founded Flinders University in 1968, he already knew a great deal about South Australia’s constitutional, legal and political history from research for his MA thesis at the University of Tasmania on the Boothby Case. In 1974 he was appointed to the South Australia Working Party of the ADB. He proved to be a valuable addition.  In 1996, following the resignation of John Playford, Peter was appointed chair of the working party, state Section Editor and a member of the Editorial Board of the ADB. He thus became the public face of the ADB in South Australia. In this role he has played an important part in the selection of South Australian subjects and the nomination of authors. His wide knowledge of that state’s history has enabled him to see through an author’s whitewash and any tendency to write a reverent obituary notice that omits less creditable information. Often this concern for accuracy and honesty has led him to undertake time-consuming additional research to correct errors, and obtain information which authors might have ignored. Dozens of entries on South Australians have benefited from his editing. 

Both as chair of the South Australian Working Party, and Section Editor and as a contributor over fifty years, Peter Howell has shown exceptional loyalty and dedication to the Australian Dictionary of Biography which makes him a worthy recipient of the ADB medal.