Extract: Nation, Memory, Myth by Steve Vizard
Posted on 11 Jun 2025
How does myth generate meaning for a nation and its citizens? How does a national myth transform into symbolic performances of cultural memory and kinship?
Andrew David
Andrew David joined the Royal Navy in 1943, and during a career of more than forty years served in Western Australia, the Persian Gulf, Africa, the Mediterranean, the West Indies and around the British Isles. In 1961 he commanded HMS Medusa, conducting surveys of the west coast of England and Wales.
From 1961 to 1985 he worked in the Hydrographic Office of the Ministry of Defence, where he took a particular interest in its collection of manuscripts relating to voyages of discover in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For several years after his retirement in 1985 he continued to write Admiralty sailing directions for the Hydrographic Office.
Lieutenant Commander David has given papers on cartography and voyages of discovery at international conferences in many parts of the world. He has served on the councils of the Hakluyt Society and the Society for Nautical Research and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. He is the chief editor of The Charts and Coastal Views of Captain Cook's Voyages, published by the Hakluyt Society.
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