Grubby, funny shaggy dog story
The Mexican author Juan Pablo Villa-lobos’s first short novel, Down the Rabbit Hole (Fiesta en la madriguera), was published in…
Australian letters
Gender fluid Sir: I wonder if the authors of ‘Dr.James Barry’ got their inspiration from the 1999 publication by Isabel…
One scorching summer long ago
It was the brightest of futures; it was the End of Days. Three hundred and fifty years before Brexit, England…
Imaginary villains
There are many similarities between the way the Left, in all their wisdom and touchy-feely clear-sightedness, react both to the…
The don’ts of ‘parenting’
In the American way, the child psychologist Alison Gopnik’s new book has an attractive sound-bitey title dragging a flat-footed subtitle…
Time to sign up for free speech
The sorry state of free speech in this country appears to concern a lot of people in this country. The…
Wet dream
Utopia dons some unlikely guises, crops up in some odd places. On the sea wall a couple in their teens…
Fall of a political pin-up
After NSW Premier Mike Baird, with his Greens and neo-Marxist allies rammed through a ban on greyhound racing, ‘Kim Il…
All the way to Memphis
The bad news for old rock’n’rollers is that there’s not much time left to stay at Heartbreak Hotel — these…
Mental mollycoddling
It was recently exposed in News Limited newspapers that as many as one in three students in some elite high…
Pussy galore
I think I might be turning into Alf Garnett. When I was growing up I saw him as an obnoxious,…
Maxim Vengerov
Sir Andrew Davis, chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, described its recently announced 2017 season as ‘a marvellous feast…
My idea of fun
We don’t really do operetta in Britain these days — and at this stage in the game, I don’t really…
Aussie exceptionalism
It would have once been uncontroversial to suggest nations have characteristics that not only distinguish them from other countries, but…
France began breeding jihadis in 1989
E .D. Hirsch Jr., the American educationalist and author of Cultural Literacy, has a new book out that may throw…
The Shoppies’ sellout
The Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association — affectionately known as the ‘Shoppies’ – is under fire from employer groups…
Trump’s core insight
Donald Trump’s absurd candidacy for the presidency has obscured the broad-based resentment at continuing levels of immigration and the problems…
The week in politics in 10 words or less*
Neil Mitchell to Malcolm Turnbull, 3AW, this morning: “If you can’t run the parliament you, can’t run the country.” …
Let the market unchain indigenous communities
The problem that has sparked the Royal Commission on juvenile detention is much broader than the way in which children…
Malcolm’s misfortune exposed
As Lady Bracknell may have said “To lose one vote may be regarded as misfortune”. And so it was at…
The Climate Change Authority: garbage in, garbage out (plus a little tampering)
There have been several hundred Australian analyses of climate change policy and its costs and benefits. Most have provided profundities…
Bare ruined choirs
We’re so used to looking at the abbeys smashed up by Henry VIII — particularly Rievaulx and Byland, in north…
Queen’s Gambit rejected
One of the most reliable methods of frustrating chess computers is to play 1 d4 but then avoid the well-trodden…
No. 424
White to play. This is from Palucha-Skettos, Bhubaneswar 2016. Here White destroyed the black position with a typical tactical thrust.…
