Overview

Join authors Trish FitzSimons and Madelyn Shaw, in conversation with Annabelle Quince, as they discuss their new book, Fleeced: Unraveling the History of Wool and War at the National Library of Australia.

Drawing extensively on the National Library's collections, Fleeced: Unraveling the History of Wool and War explores how, throughout history, heightened demand for wool in wartime existed in a vortex of negotiation, intrigue and anxiety.

The discussion will look at the concurrent rise of industrial production of woollen fabrics and Southern hemisphere sheep culture in the 19th century, and its influence on the enormous increase in the size of armies in the 20th century. It will also explore how warring nations jockeyed for access to the same limited resource, while they simultaneously searched for its elusive replacement, leading to the decisive rise of fully synthetic fibres after the Korean War, and our current plight of pervasive microplastic pollution.