Christmas issue
Andrew Bolt Brendan O’Neill Boris Johnson Rod Liddle Lionel Shriver Ida Lichter Piers Akerman Ian Plimer Bella D’Abrera Benedict Cumberbatch…
Liberals, liberals everywhere
It is often said that England and America are divided by a common language, and you might as well throw…
The environmental impact of Creation
In the beginning God floated the idea of creating Heaven and Earth. He was immediately served with an injunction by…
The art of music
What does classical music, also known as art or serious music, do for us? The state spends vast amounts of…
Turnbullian nightmare
Don’t go into the Christmas holidays and 2019 thinking the nightmare is over. True, Malcolm Turnbull is no more, at…
Reggae, Ramsay and Beethoven
The recent news that the form of music known as Reggae is to be added to the Unesco world heritage…
Virtue versus vague values
Which is preferable: values or virtues? The question might appear overly academic and of little relevance but how it is…
Churchill, Orwell and, er, Shorten
There probably is some depth of yet-to-be imagined perfidy Malcolm Turnbull or his son, Alex, will descend to before the…
Australian books
There is the feeling that after ten years of political failures and assorted cultural nonsense the community is yearning for…
Female statue head Villa Casali
Most of us love Rome while still being a little overwhelmed by it. The Roman Empire’s geographical spread and duration…
Banjo
He was a solicitor, journalist,war correspondent, soldier, grazier but, most importantly, a poet. Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson CBE (1864-1941) was…
John William Waterhouse.The Lady of Shalott 1888 oil on canvas.
That a poet could enjoy huge popularity in mid-career and still be popularly admired more than a century after his…
Richard Tognetti and the ACO
As leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Richard Tognetti has never done quite what was expected, other than to be…
Words to rally and inspire: stirring speeches from Elizabeth I to the present
It was a surprise, on reading Speeches of Note, to find myself laughing and chuckling at the speech of a…
The wildest Wilde of all: the scandalous life of Oscar’s father
‘To have a father is always big news,’ according to the narrator of Sebastian Barry’s early novel, The Engine of…
Dreaming of a white Christmas? Soon that’s all we’ll be able to do
I like a book where you don’t think you’re going to be interested in the subject, but then find it’s…
Will seagulls become as scary as Hitchcock’s The Birds?
Little Toller Books, in Dorset, aims to publish old and new writing on nature by the very best writers and…
The minefield of mime: ‘halt’ to an American signifies ‘hi’ to an Arab
You may have read about this during the Iraq war. A group of local people approach an American position. A…
Why didn’t they try harder to assassinate Hitler?
Awareness of German opposition to Hitler is usually limited to Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg’s attempt to blow up the wretched…
Biting political satire: China Dream, by Ma Jian, reviewed
Ma Jian’s novels have been banned in his native China for 30 years and he has been hailed as ‘China’s…
Vivien Leigh: the brilliant star that fast burned out
‘Dark Star’ is a suitable enough title in itself, but the definition makes it a brilliant one: ‘A Dark Star’,…
A Lithuanian Romeo and Juliet: Pan Tadeusz, by Adam Mickiewicz, reviewed
It’s hard, in Britain, to imagine a popular museum devoted to a single poem. The Polish city of Wrocław hosts…
How any mother — or baby — survived childbirth before the 20th century is astonishing
Between 1300 and 1900 few things were more dangerous than giving birth. For poor and rich, the mortality rate was…
How apartheid poisoned the world
Around 1970 I was labelled ‘Public Enemy No. 1’ by white South Africa’s newspapers for leading militant anti-apartheid protests which…
Relish — and cultivate — your grievances
Grudges make the world go around, according to Sophie Hannah. They are ‘an important and fascinating part of human experience’,…