Shadowline: The Dunera Diaries of Uwe Radok

In September 1939, Britain declared war on Germany, and the life of Uwe Radok, a young German-born engineer working in Scotland, changed forever. Classified as an 'enemy alien, ' Uwe was deported to Canada on the Arandora Star. When the ship was torpedoed, drowning more than 800, Uwe and his brothers survived--only to be marched onto the infamous Dunera, bound for Australia. From 1940 to 1943 Uwe kept a series of diaries. Their pages offer a remarkable account of the effects of displacement. The harrowing voyage and the tedium of indefinite detainment are rendered with clarity. Over time, this gives way to an exploration of the contours of love, as Uwe formed a sustaining connection with another male internee. Edited by Uwe's daughter Jacquie Houlden and historian Seumas Spark, the diaries offer a fascinating insight into life in wartime internment. In depicting the barriers to homosexual and bisexual love in the 1940s, they reveal a new element to the Dunera story that has gone unexplored. Vivid and poignant, Shadowline is a powerful portrait of a man torn between his feelings and society's expectations.

Author: Jacquie Houlden
Publisher: Monash University Publishing
Published: 02/01/2023
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.52lbs
Size: 9.66h x 6.82w x 0.63d
ISBN13: 9781922633620
ISBN10: 1922633623
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | General
- History | Australia & New Zealand | General
- History | Wars & Conflicts | World War II | General

About the Author
Jacquie Houlden is Uwe Radok's daughter. An educator and co-founder of an education technology company, she has also written a children's book, Felix and the Flea Circus, about a flea running away from the circus to find his own dog. At home in the height of the Covid lockdown, she opened a tin containing her father's wartime diaries and began transcribing them, uncovering a surprising story. Seumas Spark is an Adjunct Fellow in History at Monash University. He is a co-author of Dunera Lives: Profiles and Dunera Lives: A Visual History, and co-editor of 'I Wonder' The Life and Work of Ken Inglis.