Malcolm Ward

Malcolm is a Tasmanian researcher and writer of Tasmanian history, mainly on colonial times and subjects. His other interests are classical European, eastern European and central Asian Islamic history and architecture and he has more than passing interest in good red wine. Malcolm was born in Hobart in 1959 and had a career as a geologist and geothermal energy consultant which took him around the world many times, allowing him to pursue his interests first-hand.

In 2020 Malcolm completed a PhD on Tasmanian colonial settler George Meredith and in 2021 published an edited collection of Meredith’s love letters to his wife, a powerful demonstration of gender power imbalance in Tasmania’s colonial past. An expanded and revised second edition of the highly successful and award-winning Houses & Estates of Old Glamorgan was published late in 2021. He is currently working on a biography of George Meredith as well as a number of smaller research projects with a focus on eastern Tasmania.

Website: www.vandemonianhistory.com

Books:

Built by Seabrook. Hobart buildings constructed by the Seabrook family from the 1830s (2004)

Sergeant Samuel Thorne. A Royal Marine in the Napoleonic wars and first settler of Hobart Town (2007)

A Reid and Shakespeare family history (2014)

The Royal Marine and the convict. Samuel Thorne, James Ward and their heritage at Pitt Water and the Lower Ferry(2016)

Houses & estates of old Glamorgan (2017) with Maureen Martin Ferris and Tully Brookes

Love, passion and cruelty in Van Diemen’s Land. George Meredith’s love letters to his wife 1823-1836 (2021)

Houses & estates of old Glamorgan (second edition) (2021) with Maureen Martin Ferris and Tully Brookes

Some other publications:

M Ward, The clash between Aboriginal people and settlers in Van Diemen’s Land – the experience of George Meredith of Great Swan Port, THRA PP, Vol 66, No 2, August 2019, pp 19-41.

M Ward, Striving for Independence: George Meredith’s early life and campaigns in Van Diemen’s Land, CTHS, Vol 23, 2019, pp 67-94.

M Ward and MM Ferris, William Bull, convict and colonial builder in Van Diemen’s Land, THRA PP, Vol 66, No 3, December 2019, pp 63-73.

M Ward, The Political Association of Van Diemen’s Land, THRA PP, Vol 67, No 3, December 2020, pp 59-75.

M Ward, Thomas George Gregson and some early history of Hobart’s eastern shore, THRA PP, Vol 68, No 3, December 2021, pp 19-23