The best of the bunch
It’s hard (if not impossible) to imagine a world worth living in that doesn’t include the Marx Brothers; and equally…
A sentimental journey
Publishers lately seem to have got the idea that otherwise uncommercial subjects might be rendered sexy if presented with a…
Perturbed spirit
Long Shadows, a powerful novel set mainly in the American civil war, is very unlike Gone with the Wind. The…
The French scapegoat
On 15 June 1645, as Thomas Fairfax’s soldiers picked over the scattered debris on the Naseby battlefield, they made a…
The dangers of vegetarianism
I do not doubt that hot weather occasioned by climate change is the primary cause of the many wildfires we…
Adrift in Berlin
Feelings of dislocation are at the heart of Amit Chaudhuri’s award-winning novels. Friend of My Youth (2017) followed a writer’s…
A shaggy drug story
The Scottish writer David Keenan has published five novels in five years: This is Memorial Device (2017), For the Good…
Seize the moment
Barney Norris’s third novel opens with a wedding in April. The couple tying the knot don’t matter; it’s the occasion…
At least we still have wine
Even in recent heat, the English summer can be magical. As long as there is shade, a pool and a…
The Russian enigma
Nothing is certain in a country where the past is constantly rewritten, says Owen Matthews
What art will represent us?
It glows. The whole painting glows. Glows not just with the way the light from a fire unseen beyond the…
Suing child gender clinics may be harder in Australia
It would probably be illegal for Victorian families to do what their British counterparts are doing, and sue LGBTQ+ child gender…
Howard still prefers Bush to Trump
If you have read The Australian recently, you would have discovered that ex-Prime Minister John Howard does not like Donald Trump. Reading…
No, 44 percent of pregnant women didn’t miscarry after the Pfizer shot
Feminist author “Dr.” Naomi Wolf is making the rounds with a bombastic new claim that nearly half of pregnant women…
Donald Trump has enemies everywhere
I think that Michael Anton is correct that “the people who really run the United States of America have made it clear…
The gender debate is getting nastier
Elaine Miller is one of the grown-ups. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, with a specialism…
Can Zelensky afford to freeze Ukraine’s gas prices?
This morning, Volodymyr Zelensky signed a moratorium on energy prices – so while gas bills are rising all over Europe,…
What’s to blame for the surge in excess deaths?
From the beginning, the debate over lockdowns was skewed by the fact that Covid deaths were imminent – and any…
Salman Rushdie was never safe
The stabbing of Salman Rushdie sends a renewed message to the world: take Islamism – the transformation of the Islamic…
The growing extremism of France’s eco warriors
In August 1999 a group of protestors demolished a McDonald’s restaurant under construction in Aveyron, southern France. Their leader was…
The unedifying Afghan blame game
A year ago we scuttled out of Afghanistan. We abandoned the aim we and the Americans had proclaimed so noisily…
We need to talk about Sam Harris
Stunned silence was my immediate reaction to author and philosopher Sam Harris’ comments on a recent Triggernometry podcast. ‘At that…
AIMS reef monitoring the most extensive in the world
I write to firmly contest the claims of last week’s opinion article regarding the annual survey of the Great Barrier…
Sir David Smith’s final bow
With the impeccable timing only senior vice-regal staff truly understand, former official secretary to various Australian Governors-General, Sir David Smith,…
Do we fill job vacancies with pensioners or migrants?
The Albanese government is demonstrating a truism in Australian politics: no matter what party you vote for, you’ll get rapid…
