Arts and culture
Geraldine Brooks and Darleen Bungey
Major award-winning biographies of Arthur Boyd and John Olsen have preceded the third book by Darleen Bungey. It is less…
The Elgin Marbles
He grew up in Eastwood on Sydney’s Northern Line. Geoffrey Robertson’s brilliant career got off to a flying start with…
Geoffrey Blainey
He coined the phrase ‘tyranny of distance’ which not only entered the language but encapsulated the view that many Australians…
Anne Glenconner
It is said that Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine from the plague. Some have been suggesting that this year’s…
Lloyd Rees Solitude 1978
‘How much of our village do we burn to contain this?’. That was the chilling headline of an article in…
Christos Tsiolkas
This was not the ideal beach book for the Christmas holidays but now we are in different times, it has…
Mozart’s Clarinet
A couple of friends have nominated it as music they would like played at their funerals. I’m not into programming…
David Hallberg
The artistic leadership of a major performing company is, by definition, important. The Australian Ballet has a forthcoming vacancy of…
David Williamson
‘That sinkhole of ambition and superficiality we call Sydney.’ That’s a direct quotation from the Melbourne Theatre Company’s promotion of…
Trent Dalton
He’s barely in his forties. He’s married with two nearly teenage daughters. He lives in Brisbane. He’s a staff journalist…
Bruce Beresford at home in Birchgrove 2018
Sydney’s Archibald has the name and the fame, but there is a new kid on the block: the Darling Portrait…
No Pay? No Way!
As a sort of protest, I am not going to the opening of No Pay? No Way! at the Sydney…
The Happy Prince
Many people have had a go at it. Ever since Oscar Wilde published The Happy Prince and Other Tales in…
Luca Micheletti and Anna Dowsley
A taciturn Glaswegian and an unlikely knight of the realm, David McVicar has directed several of Opera Australia’s most admired…
Marta Dusseldorp
Known throughout his life as Dick, Gerardus Dusseldorp had just come to Australia and created Civil and Civic (later Lend…
Heritage Cai Guo-Qiang, China b.1957
We talk about it a lot. One of life’s most essential elements it is now being celebrated in an exhibition:…
Lachlan Macquarie
One of the Scots who made extraordinary contributions to Australia was Lachlan Macquarie. Grantley Kieza has published several biographies including…
Natalia Aroyan and friend at Sydney Opera House
It’s summer in Sydney, so there is an Opera Season. Two productions by the distinguished British director David McVicar –…
Hugh Ramsay “Miss Nellie Patterson” 1903
This is a great time of the year to visit Canberra and the National Gallery. Despite some ‘gender equality’ grandstanding…
Portrait of Rear-Admiral William Bligh (detail) Alexander Huey, 1814
Hero or Villain? That is the question posed about William Bligh by an exhibition currently at the Australian National Maritime…
The Memory Pool
‘Tis the season to be planning your holiday reading. I take inspiration from the marvellous bookshop in the beautiful lobby…
William Dobell “Woman in a Salon (Helena Rubinstein)” 1960
She was a girl from Coleraine who became the world’s first self made multi-millionairess. Born in Krakôw, Poland in1872, she…
Caroline O’Connor is the Spider Woman
They wrote musicals based on the most unlikely material but John Kander and Fred Ebb enjoyed ultimate success with Cabaret…
Jacqueline Dark, Taryb Fiebig and Helen Sherman
Vivaldi is having further boosts to his popularity with the Brandenburg Orchestra delivering cracking performances of his Four Seasons in…
John Singer Sargent’s Madame X
Baron François Gérard would be astonished that his vast 1825 painting of The Coronation of Charles X is the inspiration…
