Ita Buttrose: Emma Alberici, eat your heart out
The great koala capers continue
Multinational green corporations such as World Wildlife Fund are taking millions of dollars from well-meaning and naive people concerned about the welfare of…
Ita Buttrose: Emma Alberici, eat your heart out
In case you managed to miss Ita Buttrose’s stirring speech in defence of her well-remunerated job, sorry, the ABC, here’s…
Clive James, sex and revolution
One year ago, on November 24, 2019, the great man of letters, comedian, and raconteur, Clive James, died. I won’t even pretend to be impartial. Ever since I was fourteen,…
Mourning the non-existent transexual murder epidemic
Imagine a funeral where mourners stand grieving around an empty coffin. Those gathered for the service are inconsolable. That there…
Those small-l liberals and their ABC
In his recent appearance on Insiders, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull vehemently declared that: The Guardian is an avowedly, small-l liberal,…
The Sword of Damocles hangs over the heads of some SAS troopers
Central to the Special Air Service badge is a dagger, surmounted by wings. It was inspired by SAS founder Colonel…
Where is Australia’s conservative intellectual movement?
“There are right-wing commentators aplenty on the ‘op-ed’ pages of the newspapers and in journals of opinion, but they are…
Just how voluntary will any coronavirus vaccine be, given the ethical concerns?
Over the last couple of weeks there have been several developments with regard to a potential coronavirus vaccine. On 16…
Did Trump just concede?
President Trump said Monday in a tweet that his administration is willing to start the formal transition of power to…
The amazing blandness of Joe Biden’s foreign policy team
What does a Joe Biden presidency mean? We all know the answer. It means that tired but nice-sounding clichés about…
Was Covid beginning to peak before the second lockdown?
‘I don’t think that word means what you think it means,’ says the Spaniard Inigo Montoya in the film The…
Criminal gangs are making billions from fake medical supplies during COVID
While it’s great news that Pfizer, BioNTech, AstraZeneca and other pharmaceutical companies are developing vaccines to prevent people from getting…
Emissions reduction targets stink
The anti-democratic sentiments of the climate change cult have been exposed again. According to them, the results of an election…
Covid and culture cringe
Culture cringe seems alive in Australia. Speaking in parliament on 27 October, Labor’s deputy leader Richard Marles made a pointed…
Dismiss dismissal dogma
Beware those who claim a monopoly on historical truth. Their goal is not enlightenment or edification, but rather the unthinking…
Living in Andrew Jacksonland
All of us living in the Anglosphere right now are living through two pretty major political shifts. Forty years ago…
The big steal
Consider this election night scenario: America and the world sit down and tune in to the vote count for the…
Apocalypse next
‘To state the obvious, we seem to be turning a pretty dark corner now,’ said Joe Biden, this week, gloom-monger-in-chief.…
Honour the brave
Why are politicians — elected public servants — so determined to run down morale in our defence forces, discourage enlistment…
May I quota you?
What would you call a glass ceiling that blocks men from career advancement? A lipstick ceiling? Whatever, it exists, even…
Here come the judge
1968 was a year of recurring turbulence for the United States, all of it witnessed in American living rooms, courtesy…
Billy Wilder
Slowly the world of the arts starts to take a timid step forward in plague-torn Australia. Just as alarming new…
Ernani at Teatro all Scala
The Opera is coming back! Unable to perform for nine months, the company has suffered great financial loss, forcing substantial…
The Undoing
It’s a strange prospect for strange times, the young violinist Freya Franzen on the stage of Melbourne’s Concert Hall playing…
Cheering for Jürgen Klopp: Liverpool FC’s manager can do no wrong
As his biographer, I feel obliged to quote John Updike’s wise sayings — among them the first rule in his…
A closing of ranks: The Searcher, by Tana French, reviewed
If the homage wasn’t clear from the title, Tana French makes sure throughout The Searcher, her seventh novel and second…
Poise and wit: The Collected Stories of Shirley Hazzard reviewed
Shirley Hazzard was in her late twenties when, in 1959, somewhat diffidently, she submitted her first short story to the…
High-speed trains, planes and automobiles are increasingly redundant
Should the world be faster or slower? This is a question relevant to global economics, politics and culture. But not…
Sunshine on a plate: the year’s best cookbooks
In the dark days of a terrible winter, Elizabeth David began writing her first book, about Mediterranean food. The timing…
A brutal education: At Night All Blood is Black, by David Diop, reviewed
Alfa Ndiaye, a Senegalese soldier fighting for France in the trenches of the Great War, is consumed by bloodlust, which…
Tortured youths: how childhood misery often makes for genius
Greatness. Genius. Can you bottle it? Is there a formula? Inspired by his Radio 4 series Great Lives, Matthew Parris…
Claire Messud helps us see the familiar with new eyes
The title of this collection of journalism is a problem. Not the Kant’s Little Prussian Head bit, which, though opaque,…