Got a gun in my hand
The final scene in the brilliant television series The Sopranos is set in a diner where Tony’s family is gathered…
Don’t forget the motor city
No Sudden Move, Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Streaming on Amazon Prime
Hooray for Hollywood
Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood – and hates it.…
Killing Comrade Hampton
Fred Hampton, the young chairman of the Illinois Black Panthers, makes a brief appearance in The Trial of the Chicago…
Here come the judge
1968 was a year of recurring turbulence for the United States, all of it witnessed in American living rooms, courtesy…
Battle honours
In the cabinet war rooms in Whitehall in London, there is a chart which registers Atlantic convoys en route from…
Base politics
Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York moved to the lectern. It was the Cow Palace in San Francisco in…
Glittering lights and dark nights
A serial thriller-writer stalks the streets of LA
Des Moines diary
As is obvious from recent events, we live in times where it is not enough to disagree with someone and…
White House gossip
When the brilliant American biographer, Robert A. Caro, first approached the task of writing a biography of the 36th President…
Pearl Harbor
The Punchbowl in Honolulu, Hawaii is a place of reverence in which 34,000 American battle-dead are interred. Battlefield remains are…
Unforgotten person
A newly-elected Australian Prime Minister was pleased to receive a letter of congratulations from Australia’s longest serving PM, Sir Robert…
Kiwi notes
The Socialist Ardernative New Zealand politics has thrown up some wonderful invective over the years. A favourite of mine originated…
The Fighting Kangaroo
Jim Eames, an established and respected aviation writer, whose previous credits include The Flying Kangaroo, a history of Qantas, has…
Hawaiian notes
Under Hawaiian eyes The Pearl Harbour memorial to the 1,177 American sailors and marines (1,102 still entombed) who lost their…
Ruck ‘n roll
As every Speccie reader certainly will be aware and no doubt heartily applaud, the game of rugby league was born…
Telling it on the mountain
As we stood on the threshold of the dacha outside Vladivostok, the Australian delegation paused. We had been monitoring Boris…
Australian Diary
At the end of the week of Treasurer Joe Hockey’s second Federal Budget, I recalled the caustic observation about the…
War and jealousy
Le Hamel was the site of an extraordinary triumph of allied arms early on the morning of July 4, 1918.…
Californian diary
The American Republic has always been characterized by great political families. From earliest days, from the Adams and the Harrisons…
Shock jock
A senior Minister in the NSW government of John Fahey once told me that there was a vacant metaphorical chair…
Lazarus is back
Australia’s Ambassador to the United States, Kim Beazley, still quips that John Winston Howard is his nemesis. This does not…
Hero and villain
There is a story told of Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister speaking with his Treasurer, Bill Hayden. It is late…
American notes
The 1980 US presidential election campaign was characterised by warnings from the Carter White House about the impact of a…
Sound military history
Scott Fitzgerald once made the famous observation that there are no second acts in American life. Perhaps. But Mike Carlton…
