Aussie Life
Australia’s by-sea-girtness, as much as its size, means meteorologists will always have their work cut out predicting the kind of…
Aussie Life
I didn’t plan to watch it. I just happened to switch on my TV as it was starting. And the…
Aussie Life
If you asked a roomful of Poms to list Winston Churchill’s greatest achievements, few would put ‘introducing the minimum wage’…
Aussie Life
The most powerful ad I created for David Cameron’s 2010 election campaign was a billboard featuring a still from a…
Aussie Life
Has any speech by an American politician ever received more attention in the Australian media than Joe Biden’s inauguration speech?…
Books shop
When the Irish comedian Dylan Moran was interviewed on ABC radio last year as a precursor to his (now presumably…
Culture wars
Forming groups to kill other groups over territory, resources or belief is so much a part of the human condition…
Victorian burglars
Spare a thought for Victorian burglars. Just when they thought they could go back to ransacking South Yarra mansions while…
Mystery portrait
Shortly after moving to Manhattan in the noughties I was strolling through the West Village when I came across a…
Aussie Life
It has been brought to my attention that the rename Victoria suggestion I made in these pages two weeks ago…
Simon Collins
Like most Speccie readers I am anxious to give public vent to my outrage at police brutality, institutional racism and…
Simon Collins
The uncompromising nature of Australia’s lockdown may well have been inspired by the example set by other countries. Or it…
Simon Collins
Some people like to round off a meal with a glass of brandy and a cigar; others settle for coffee…
Simon Collins
People who shout and gesticulate while walking unaccompanied though city centres used to be called nutters. But we now have…
Simon Collins
After the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics, the postponement of the 2020 Tour de France couldn’t have taken many people…
Simon Collins
‘What did you do in the war, grandad?’ ‘I stayed in.’ If this really is a war, as we are…
Simon Collins
I began my self-quarantine last week, after returning from London, but it wasn’t until five days later that the symptoms…
They’ll be able to squeeze pizza under the door when I’m back home self isolating, won’t they?
I write this in the Singapore Airlines lounge at Heathrow. My flight doesn’t leave for another three hours, but these…
Simon Collins
A friend recently invited me to a Sydney gallery opening to see paintings by a group of first nations artists…
Simon Collins
Apparently many travellers now pay more attention to a hotel’s guest reviews than to its advertising. I tend to ignore…
Fear itself
‘A very merry Christmas,’ sang John Lennon in 1971, ‘and a Happy New Year; let’s hope it’s a good one,…
Simon Collins
If you stay single long enough most of your married friends will stop trying to match-make you and take up…
Simon Collins
‘Dr Martin Luther King didn’t say “I have a nightmare,”’ is the opening line of a letter the IPA recently…
Simon Collins
I’m starting to think the Victorians were right about children. And when I say Victorians, I’m not talking about that…
