Australian notes
Time to cancel cancel culture If I were ever asked, and I won’t be, I would urge the government to…
Cultural notes
While the West slept President Kennedy wrote a thesis in his last year at university that was later published under…
Euro notes
How DFAT (yet again) let us down Foreign Minister Marise Payne’s robust initiative in leading the call for an independent…
Lawless Labor easy meat
Victoria’s Libs should be able to trounce the Andrews government. But will they?
Business/Robbery etc.
Fake news on super’s early access spend The attention-grabbing media headline ‘Revealed: Aussies spend early access super on gambling, beauty…
Australian arts
It’s all about the money honey. When I awoke to see the front cover of the Weekend Australian’s Review Section…
Next year in Jerusalem
Alex Ryvchin’s book couldn’t possibly have come at a better time. On an almost daily basis, voices opposed to the…
Keith Urban using a Maton guitar, recording Gimme Shelter in Olympic Studios, London
We are critical of ourselves for not designing or manufacturing things any more. Well, there is a contrary example in…
Aussie Life
Everyone wants to get high and have sex while saving money. So says P. J. O’Rourke, the political satirist who…
Time immemorial
Some books elucidate their subject, mapping and sharpening its boundaries. The Clock Mirage, by the mathematician Joseph Mazur, is not…
New word order
I was going to write about Monument Valley, and I suppose I will eventually, but first I have to write…
Trapped in hell
On the morning of 10 March 1920, on the edge of the city of Pachuca in central Mexico, 87 miners…
Everyday exchanges
Conversation is a fascinating subject, says Philip Hensher – but very few people get it right
One who got away
In 1694 London’s streets echoed with a call to the piratical life: Come all you brave boys, whose courage is…
The road to Weimar
Has it ever occurred to you that the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 might have won us the war? Until…
Will Covid change anything?
Earlier this month, a curious report caught my attention. Apparently there exists no rigorously established evidence that electric shock therapy,…
Why Biden might be better for Brexit Britain
At the best of times, US presidential elections require the British government to walk a tightrope. In 1992, a Tory…
The lives of others
Strange, when your own life flatlines, the way in which other lives become suddenly more interesting. I have been retreating…
Giving the game away
This is not a rip-roaring, gonzo gambling adventure. By page 66 this cautious, thoughtful author has still never played a…
Peaty giant, Tuscan flower
The virus is in retreat, the lock-down is crumbling, the sherbet dispensaries will shortly reopen and there is a second…
Who watches the watchdog?
At the beginning of April, I became so frustrated by the supine coverage of the government’s response to the coronavirus…
