John J. Taylor.  Between Duty and Design: The Architect Soldier Sir
J. J. Talbot Hobbs.  Perth  University of Western Australia Press,
2014.  272 pp.  $59.99 (paper), ISBN 978-1-74258-620-5.

Reviewed by Stanley Schwartz (Temple University)
Published on H-War (October, 2020)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

Australian historians and popular authors entangled in a decades-old
debate over the legacy of World War I for the Australian nation often
apply military, political, social, and public history approaches to
make their case.[1] While a straightforward biography, John J.
Taylor's book, _Between Duty and Design: The Architect Soldier Sir J.
J. Talbot Hobbs_, contributes to this literature. Citizenship and
profession stand at the heart of the narrative. Taylor considers how
personal identity and vocational training shaped an immigrant English
architect who would become known as Western Australia's greatest
soldier. Portraying intently the modest canvas of Perth, the author
still traces the global travels of Hobbs and his family, focused
mainly from 1864 to 1938. The architectural study thus manages to
touch on themes of empire, nation, class, and public memory through
an engaging life story.   

Taylor argues that experiences as an architect and volunteer soldier
slowly transformed Hobbs from a British citizen of empire to a
leading representative of Australia generally and Western Australia
specifically. Born in London and only arriving in Perth as an adult
in 1887, Hobbs held a British identity and "reverence" for the royal
family that were common among his contemporaries. Hobbs carried over
to his new home the design habits and military activity he learned in
the metropole. Soon, Australia's climate and building materials
required him to adapt an architectural style different from his
English practices. The new Australian nation, federated in 1901, also
generated institutions, events, and conversations pulling Hobbs
toward a new citizenship. Family ties, membership in professional
organizations, and imperial military duties connected the successful
architect to the old country throughout his life, but his experience
during World War I cemented his commitment to Australia. A declining
opinion of British officers combined with prominence in Australian
business, diplomacy, and war memory to provide a newly national
identity in Hobbs's last decades of life.

The author uses standard organization and biographical method to
patiently trace the contours of his story. A strict chronology
characterizes the timeline of _Between Duty and Design_, narrowly
tailored to the life of Hobbs and his immediate descendants. While
the narrative connects to other historians' studies of Australian and
imperial life and development, Taylor avoids striking theoretical or
thematic departures from his subject's story. He does pay close
attention to the changing faces of Perth and Fremantle, Western
Australian cities where Hobbs did his work for decades. Urban and
environmental history themes of civic life, resource management, and
physical space are subtly woven throughout the book, joining Hobbs
closely to the expansion he helped design and lead.

Taylor's background as an architect contributes to a unique, if not
especially broad, set of sources for his biography of Hobbs. A
wonderful collection of photos and drawings of Hobbs's architectural
designs provides colorful and extensive setting through the physical
environment for his work and life. The author has also assembled an
impressive secondary literature relating to the architectural
profession, Perth, and Western Australia. Many of these sources come
from the early twentieth century, as a wave of Australian historians
newly assessed their nation's transition from an assembly of colonies
to a federation and imperial Dominion. Newspapers supplement Taylor's
materials well, but he presents insights from Hobbs's diaries and
letters sporadically, so that the architect-soldier's voice comes
through clearly in some chapters but is muted in others. Notably,
with a few exceptions, the author uses little of the secondary
literature on World War I, the British Empire, or Australian social
and cultural history.

Thus, Taylor's consistently tight vision of his topic keeps the
book's position within the historiography underdeveloped. Regarding
military history alone, several works could have provided more
perspective on Hobbs's experiences. Ian Beckett's _The Amateur
Military Tradition, 1558-1945_ (1991) features several arguments
about the middle-class conservative associations of volunteer
service.[2] Taylor does not connect Hobbs's youth in families
struggling to make ends meet with the adult Hobbs's pursuit of rising
status through volunteer military service, but the portrait supports
Beckett's work. For literature on World War I, Taylor's narrative
conflicts with Paul Fussell's _The Great War and Modern Memory_
(1975). On a narrow level, Fussell argued that proximity between the
ghastly world of the trenches and the "rich plush of London" made the
war "ridiculous" for soldiers.[3] Taylor, by contrast, portrays
Hobbs's regular visits from the front line back to England to see
family and recuperate as giving him the ability to endure the war.
While the author aimed at writing the history of an architect as much
as a soldier, making these simple linkages would have yielded a
richer historiographical contribution.

An excellent but limited history, _Between Duty and Design_
illustrates the value and limitations of biography. The writing does
not always grip the reader, nor does the author fully explore
potential links to other historical scholarship. The book remains
valuable for students of Australian architecture, Western Australian
history, and imperial movement. Several compiled tables of Australian
architects active during Hobbs's lifetime could prove to be lasting
referential resources for other historians as well. Taylor has
achieved a clear, restrained biography of Hobbs and persuasively
traces the evolution of his professional career and citizenship
identity.

Notes

[1]. Alistair Thomson, "Popular Gallipoli History and the
Representation of Australian Military Manhood," _History Australia_
16, no. 3 (2019): 518-25.

[2]. Ian Beckett, _The Amateur Military Tradition, 1558-1945_
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 169-78, 182-84,
191-93.

[3]. Paul Fussell, _The Great War and Modern Memory_ (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1975), 69.

Citation: Stanley Schwartz. Review of Taylor, John J., _Between Duty
and Design: The Architect Soldier Sir J. J. Talbot Hobbs_. H-War,
H-Net Reviews. October, 2020.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55643

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