Lewis Bostock Radford by Annette Carter

September 2026 release. 

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Paperback, 250+ pages, $39.95

ISBN: 9781923568884

Scholar, educator and visionary, Bishop Lewis Bostock Radford helped shape the Australian Anglican Church, religious schools and everyday life in early twentieth-century Australia. Drawing on extensive archival research, this biography traces his journey from rural England to New South Wales, where his influence was felt from St Paul’s College in Sydney to the establishment of Canberra’s first two Anglican schools and the allocation of land for an Anglican cathedral. This is the story of a remarkable and complex man whose legacy continues to shape Canberra today.

Annette Carter is a historian with more than 20 years’ experience across museums and the heritage sector. Her work has ranged from archaeological excavations in France to museum exhibitions, heritage conservation and local history projects. She has published in Warfare magazine, contributed a chapter to The Desire for Change, 2004–2007: The Howard Government (UNSW Press, 2021), and co-authored the 2025 publication: Where Few Have Been: Sir Hubert Wilkins and the Antarctic. She is the President of the Collector and District Historical Society.

One liners about Bishop Radford: “His brilliance, his scholarship, his enthusiasm, his tireless tenacity to the causes that captured his alert and vivid imagination, all tended to heighten the intensity and quicken the pace of church life, not only in the diocese of Goulburn but in the church as a whole” – Bishop Ernest Burgmann, 1937.

“His judgements were more often right than wrong, his principles were clear, decisive and sincere, and he had courage and conviction and for all his impatience those who really knew him loved him. He was frequently misunderstood and more often misunderstood when he was indubitably right.” – Ransome Wyatt, Diocesan Registrar, 1937.

“Bishop Radford of Goulburn is … a brilliant conversationalist, an eloquent public speaker, a man of broad and tolerant views, and although an Englishman by birth and education, he has become Australianised, and is what might truthfully be termed ‘a Big Australian’”. – Gundagai Independent and Pastoral, Agricultural and Mining Advocate, 1915.