Australian Books

Unsung hero

7 November 2015 9:00 am

Between the defeat of the government of Digby Denham in 1915 and the election of Campbell Newman in 2012, Queensland…

Aussie royals

3 October 2015 9:00 am

If the issue of Australia becoming a republic is a marathon rather than a sprint, the republicans never had a…

Telling it on the mountain

12 September 2015 9:00 am

As we stood on the threshold of the dacha outside Vladivostok, the Australian delegation paused. We had been monitoring Boris…

Pollie peddling

15 August 2015 9:00 am

When Christopher Pyne’s A Letter to My Children was launched, a bunch of radical students mounted a violent demonstration. The…

Salad days

8 August 2015 9:00 am

If you enjoy reading Greg Sheridan’s Diaries in this magazine, you’ll love this book. The author, a 30-year veteran journalist…

For your own good

1 August 2015 9:00 am

I grew up queer in Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland. Bjelke-Petersen was populist, racist, and religious: he hated socialism, but the Queensland of…

Steyin’ alive

18 July 2015 9:00 am

What are the odds that one of the world’s best political commentators happens to be an expert on the songs…

The first Clive Palmer

20 June 2015 9:00 am

When former Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard, was finishing off his autobiography Lazarus Rising in 2010 I asked him whether…

Winning the Cold War, losing the culture wars

23 May 2015 9:00 am

On the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe day, many Eastern Europeans boycotted celebrations in Moscow, marking the day with…

Crank Case

16 May 2015 9:00 am

Paul Heywood-Smith QC has written a weak case for Palestine. A much stronger book was there to be written, but…

Local hero

2 May 2015 9:00 am

Some of us habitually quote Orwell’s correct comparison of producing first-person prose to ‘dosing yourself with some … very deleterious…

War and jealousy

25 April 2015 9:00 am

Le Hamel was the site of an extraordinary triumph of allied arms early on the morning of July 4, 1918.…

In the bunker

25 April 2015 9:00 am

Wars make myths; probably no-one understood that better than Charles Bean, Australia’s first true war writer and a person who…

In the bunker

25 April 2015 9:00 am

Wars make myths; probably no-one understood that better than Charles Bean, Australia’s first true war writer and a person who…

Ends of the earth

18 April 2015 9:00 am

This story, second in a projected series (the first was The Thief Fleet, reviewed in these pages 8 December 2012),…

Tales to tell

14 March 2015 9:00 am

The short story has long been a staple of Australian literature but has had something of a rough ride in…

Buffoonery

24 January 2015 9:00 am

Not so much striding across the political landscape as huffing and puffing his way through the back rooms, Clive Palmer…

Under the bed

13 December 2014 9:00 am

The bogeyman of the ASIO agent under the bed has long been an obsession of the Left, and judging from…

Shock jock

29 November 2014 9:00 am

A senior Minister in the NSW government of John Fahey once told me that there was a vacant metaphorical chair…

It’s the Stupid, stupid

22 November 2014 9:00 am

Ironic Capitalisation of That Which You Do Not Like is apparently A Thing. You’ll forgive me for employing this Irritating…

Genocidal thoughts

15 November 2014 9:00 am

It takes a certain type of courage for a writer to complete a book and then admit that he does…

Lazarus is back

18 October 2014 9:00 am

Australia’s Ambassador to the United States, Kim Beazley, still quips that John Winston Howard is his nemesis. This does not…

In the big chair

11 October 2014 9:00 am

Even those of us of a conservative bent hoped that the election of the Rudd government in 2007 would constitute…

Racy reading

4 October 2014 9:00 am

In a field which is often characterised by polemics and hand-wringing, Noel Pearson has emerged as both a considered thinker…

Head Beaters

27 September 2014 9:00 am

Ah, democracy. The informed will of the majority. If only the practice was as simple as the theory. When it…