How we’ve turned mad – half mad, anyway
Two numbers in the low forties popped up in two separate stories this week: Americans today are more closely divided…
Chris Bowen’s out, but will Albo heed his warning on religious freedom?
It is slowly starting to dawn on some Labor voters that Australians with a traditional Christian worldview are feeling somewhat…
Ten more reasons Labor lost the unlosable election
Most people I speak to think that as a nation, we just dodged a bullet. And even those who voted…
The app that could see GetUp downed
In an era where political parties and policy advocates on the right are struggling to find new ways to engage…
Tony Abbott: with thanks to the fallen warrior
Last night former prime minister Tony Abbott succumbed to a perfect political storm: a climate zealot candidate dressed up as…
A progressive ALP is unelectable
There used to be a line in the Lord’s Prayer which went: “But lead us not into temptation; and deliver…
The Israel Folau affair: Kafka – or John le Carré?
In the midst of the coalition’s ‘miraculous’ come from behind win at the federal election was the news that Israel…
Only a dragon and a bottle of bleach separates Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from Daenerys Targaryen
Judging by the social media response, the only people to appreciate the “Game of Thrones” series finale might be politics and…
Donald Trump’s one-front trade war
At 12:01 a.m. on Monday, President Donald Trump went a long way toward defusing a potential war – not with…
Can Brexiteers trust Boris Johnson to deliver a ‘real’ Brexit?
The current Westminster consensus that Boris Johnson is the next Tory leader and prime minister raises all sorts of thoughts.…
The case against Boris Johnson
In the old days, if the Tory party was in trouble, old hands who had seen it all before would…
The inevitability of Joe Biden
‘Biden is their nominee until further notice,’ a source close to the White House told me recently. The candidacy of…
ScoMoses
Scott Morrison, having parted Labor’s red sea and led his astonished people to the promised land, must seize his Moses…
If the ABC is so trustworthy, why isn’t anybody watching it?
Here’s a question. Who said this recently, about the ABC: ‘The ABC is one of Australia’s most important institutions. Now,…
Business/Robbery etc
Bob Hawke and Sir Peter Abeles; Bill Shorten and Anthony Pratt. What is it that attracts such close friendships between…
The sloppiest suicide note
‘No-one saw it coming,’ the shocked commentariat claimed. Goodness. Where are the ABC’s fact checkers when you need them? In…
The immigration iceberg
In the Middle Ages the periodic return of plague from the Middle East to communities throughout Europe killed off possibly…
It was The Speccie wot won it
‘No body saw it coming,’ the mainstream media repeated endlessly when results emerged on Saturday evening 18 May, contrary to…
Dirty dancing with Fannie and Freddie
You don’t need a crystal ball to see that whoever wins our federal election, the taxpayer is going to be…
All the news that’s fit to spin
Idly watching the ABC’s idea of news one evening and hearing for the thousandth time how man’s greed and indifference…
Captain James Cook. Wedgwood and Bentley, c.1779
Three speakers: one is Director of The Royal Collection comprising over a million objects in 13 royal residences across the…
John Beard Edmund (+Bill)
I don’t imagine the newest member of the Royal Family was named after the Archibald Prize but it was a…
Broadway production of Come From Away
We all remember where we were when first hearing of 9/11. Some people were on trans-Atlantic flights. When the US…
Royal portraits at Bendigo
One of our favourite places in London is in St Martin’s Place, just around the corner from Trafalgar Square and…
Towards a technological utopia
The rebranding of John Browne has been a long and, to those of us living overseas, instructive affair. Readers will…
Passing bells for old Tokyo
In Edo (now Tokyo), before the Meiji restoration, bells marked the beginning of each hour. The hours were named after…
Oddballs of English philosophy
Charles Kay Ogden once proposed that conversations would be conducted more efficiently if participants wore masks. Apart from confirming the…
Bach helped me survive Bergen-Belsen
One of the great joys of the 18th-century novella La petite maison is the way Jean-François de Bastide matches the…
Last lines on Brexit from Geoffrey Hill
In 2012 OUP published Geoffrey Hill’s Collected Poems; they could have waited, because they’re now going to need another edition.…
Brutish Brits: You Will Be Safe Here, by Damian Barr, reviewed
Damian Barr explains the upsetting genesis of his impressive debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here, in his acknowledgements: This…
The celebrated poet who’s been erased from English literature
Biographers are a shady lot. For all their claims about immortalising someone in print, as if their ink were a…
Parallel worlds: The Heavens, by Sandra Newman, reviewed
The Heavens is Sandra Newman’s eighth book. It follows novels featuring, variously, sex addiction, Buddhism and a post-apocalyptic teen dystopia;…
Gothic extremes of human cruelty: Cari Mora, by Thomas Harris, reviewed
It has been 13 years since Thomas Harris published a novel, and the last time he published one without Hannibal…
Feminism for the Fleabag generation: The Polyglot Lovers, by Lina Wolff, reviewed
Everyone behaves badly in The Polyglot Lovers — no saving graces. It’s a complex, shifting structure of sex, self-hatred and…
Drawing from the deck: superb sketches by sailors
Working in the Public Record Office some years ago, I ordered up the logbook of the badly damaged HMS Scylla…
It’s judo, not chess, that’s Putin’s game
These two refreshingly concise books address the same question from different angles: how should we deal with Russia? Mark Galeotti…