Books
Playing Woolf
The Charleston Bulletin was a family newspaper produced between 1923 and 1927 by the teenaged Quentin Bell and his elder…
We were dazzled
This is the third volume of Isaiah Berlin letters; one more to go. Discerning critics have showered the first two…
Rousseau and the Tiger
This is the Tiger and this is Rousseau. This is the picture I painted to show That this is the…
Bring on the winged kelp
On 14 April each year, nori fishermen gather on a hillside overlooking Ariake Bay on Kyushu in southern Japan to…
The history girl
Ronald Knox, found awake aged four by a nanny, was asked what he was thinking about, and he replied ‘the…
Pearl beyond price
The subtitle of Carole Seymour-Jones’s quietly moving biography of the brilliant SOE agent Pearl Witherington is ‘the real Charlotte Gray’.…
how to get a life
just to tell you there is nothing better almost nothing better than getting into bed in the middle of the…
Change and decay in all around I see
The Unwinding is a rather classy addition to the thriving genre of American apocalypse porn. The basic thesis can be…
A wicket way with words
We were never going to get ‘come to the party’ or ‘a hundred and ten per cent’ from The Authors…
Books and Arts
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A wicket way with words
We were never going to get ‘come to the party’ or ‘a hundred and ten per cent’ from The Authors…
A wicket way with words
We were never going to get ‘come to the party’ or ‘a hundred and ten per cent’ from The Authors…
Behind the masque
Music has always been integral to the image and power of monarchy. Our present Royal family should take note, says Jonathan Keate
The essential vade-mecum
After Zorba the Greek, here comes Horace the Roman. The peasant Zorba, you’ll remember from the film, releases uptight, genteel…
Father of tartan noir
Laidlaw was first published in 1977, 36 years back from now, 38 on from The Big Sleep. Like Chandler’s classic…
The future that was
Here, for time travellers, is the whack-job spirit of ’68 in distillate form, paperbound and reissued in facsimile (with some…
World-weary world power
A year or so after the ‘liberation’ of Iraq, an unnamed senior Bush administration official (later revealed to be Karl…
Cheaper than chimps
After the Morecambe Bay Hospital scandal a new era opens of compassion, -whistle-blowing, naming names and possible prosecutions. But what…
Still a ticking timebomb
No book about Dr David Kelly could start anywhere other than at the end. Kelly is found, dead, in a…
A sense of fairytale
The Vet’s Daughter is Barbara Comyns’s fourth and most startling novel. Written in 1959 when she was 50 it is…
A walking contradiction
Nick Greiner: A Political Biography By Ian Hancock Connor Court, $59.95, pp 480 ISBN 9781922168542 Ian Hancock has, in recent…
Reasons to be angry
As a teenager in the 1980s I liked Jimmy Connors. This meant parking my not inconsiderable jealousy that he’d once…
The end of separatism
In Black & White: Australians All At The Crossroads Editors: Rhonda Craven, Anthony Dillon, Nigel Parbury Connor Court, $29.95, pp…
One-sided story
Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott By David Marr Black Inc, $19.95, pp 208 ISBN 978186355980 If there is…
All our Yesterdays
Too many Beatles books? In my house there’s always room for one more, and this week’s addition is All Together…
