Rachel Podger
The Enlightenment saw orthodoxies challenged and the emergence of radical ideas throughout the latter half of the 18th century. That…
Australian Notes
Four pillars of the Museum Bob, my husband of more than half a century, was born in Tsing Tao,…
Emotional rescue
In the 1880s the young Max Klinger made a series of etchings detailing the surreal adventures of a woman’s glove…
The spirits of the age
Children started knocking on my door last month wearing Donald Trump face masks and asking for money. Indeed, one enterprising…
More secrets and symbols
Being reflexively snotty about Dan Brown’s writing is like slagging off Donald Trump’s spelling: it just entrenches everyone’s position. In…
A dense, angry fable
Set partly in a future surveillance society, partly in ancient Carthage and 1970s Ethiopia, partly in contemporary Greece and London…
A sensual Greek goddess
Joan Leigh Fermor died in 2003, aged 91, after falling in her bathroom in the house on a rocky headland…
Help over the hump
Losing our way in life’s trackless forest, whither should we turn for solace and advice? Wisdom used to be the…
A Muslim’s insights into Christianity
I’m not a critic, I’m an enthusiast. And when you are an enthusiast you need to try your best to…
Racism is a grey area
This book is an exercise in crying wolf that utterly fails to prove its main thesis: that Europe is abandoning…
How to be good
Suffering, wrote Auden, takes place ‘while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along’. His…
Animals make us human
There was a time when biologists so scorned the attribution of human qualities to other animals that anthropomorphism was seen…
The martyrdom of Proust
Why would a writer like Marcel Proust, who quivered and wheezed at the slightest sensation, decide to live surrounded by…
Barometer
Littler Hitlers Cabinet secretary Damian Green appealed to commentators to halt the ‘ridiculous rise of routine comparisons to Hitler’. A…
Roman censors
Students eager to pull down statues and silence debate on topics of which they disapprove — and vice-chancellors who pusillanimously…
Go naked on the green mountain
The Japanese take a near-obsessive delight in washing, particularly in natural thermal baths
Football focus
Part canvas, part sandwich board, club kits don’t always work – but their designs can be addictive
Why stop at New England?
Why just stop at New England? Why not the whole country? Why not go to the people? The logic is…
Should meek mean weak?
I’ve come to the conclusion that conservatives in Australia are just too nice. Which is why they lose. Every… single……
Politics, transparency and Cash
Imagine you are driving a car and collide with a cyclist. The front windscreen is smashed and the cyclist left…
Doing business with China without retreating on national security
China is a one-party state led by Xi Jinping, whose powers look like growing to that of a modern Stalin,…
How the cult of the expert weakens democracy
A new survey from Pew Research Center, which asked 42,000 people in 38 nations about their attitudes towards democracy, has…
Very Lonely Planet’s guide to Canberra
The residents of Canberra have woken up this morning to a novel sensation: somebody out there actually likes their city.…
Songs of the blood and the sword
Jihadi Culture might sound like a joke title for a book, like ‘Great Belgians’ or ‘Canadian excitements’. But in this…