Hawke’s myopia
Bob Hawke is a respected former Labor PM, but in a recent article in the AFR he incorrectly elevated Israeli…
Thoroughly modern Monteverdi
‘Eppur si muove’ — And yet it moves. Galileo’s defiant insistence that the Earth revolves round the Sun, his refusal…
Three ages of man
Moonlight is, in fact, a traditional story about identity, and finding out who you are, but it has rarely been…
The good, the bad and the ugly
Vladimir Putin notoriously declared the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 to be one of the greatest disasters of…
British sea power
The story so far: in 1986 English National Opera hired Jonathan Miller to direct Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. The…
United nations
The Indian Prime Minister has twigged something that President Trump has yet to understand. On Monday, celebrated as World Radio…
Fatal attraction
Recently on holiday I did a very bad thing. I nearly left the Fawn to die on a precipitous mountain…
Stuffed but dissatisfied
Sandi Toksvig’s new play opens in a Gravesend care home where five grannies and a temporary nurse are threatened by…
Vincent van Gogh Wheat Field with Cypresses, Saint-Rémy, 1889. The National Gallery London
Make sure you are in Melbourne between late April and early July to see the important Van Gogh exhibition coming…
Australian diary
After such a long hot summer it is oddly refreshing to be back in Canberra for the start of the…
DC diary
The Trump presidency is less than 48 hours old as I wing my way from Los Angeles to Washington DC,…
Conservative notes
Conservatism is the new Punk The other day, I logged onto eBay and ordered a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat.…
Deplorable notes
First, an apology. In my cover story last week (‘The Cory revolution’) I implied that Miranda Devine supported the Turnbull…
Turnbull’s PPL lesson
One of the mistakes that plagued Tony Abbott during his period as Prime Minister was his stubborn commitment to the…
The classic that conquered the world
Somewhere between his first and second drafts, Victor Hugo decided to change the title of his great novel from Les…
A whirlwind life
The dust cover features one of the best-known caricatures of Richard Wagner, his enormous head in this version opened like…
What the secretary saw
What the secretary sawSarah Churchwell Big Bosses: A Working Girl’s Memoir of the Jazz Age by Althea McDowell AltemusUniversity of…
The nature of genius
On 21 December 1945, Ezra Pound was confined to St Elizabeths hospital in Washington DC. He had broadcast for Rome…
Bedside manners
‘A tricky part of my job,’ the GP said, scrolling through the next patient’s notes, ‘is breaking good news.’ As…
Tricks of the trades
Oddly enough, one of the most historically influential pieces of British writing has turned out to be an essay that…
Swash and buckle aplenty
A feeble king and his scheming minister, a hunchback noble and the Daughters of Repentance, a botched assassination and a…
Everyday unhappiness
This is an extraordinarily compelling novel for one in which nothing really happens but everything changes. Sara Baume’s narrator is…
In praise of LSD
Ayelet Waldman is, surely, not the first writer to have scrolled through a list of ‘Books of the Year’ and…
Three’s a crowd
James Lasdun’s latest novel, billed as a psychological thriller, opens in Brooklyn in the summer of 2012. Charlie and his…
The game of life
In the introduction to his new book Steven Johnson starts out by describing the ninth-century Book of Ingenious Devices and…
