Australia

Heartbreak in the workplace: Green Dot, by Madeleine Gray, reviewed

10 February 2024 9:00 am

Hera is 24, bisexual and usually dates women. But her infatuation with Arthur, an older, married journalist in her office, grows all-consuming

From the Odyssey to The Wizard of Oz: Praiseworthy, by Alexis Wright, reviewed

11 November 2023 9:00 am

Everything blends into everything else as an Aboriginal knight errant sets out on a quest to save his scorched native bushlands

Has Bazball rescued — or ruined — cricket?

21 October 2023 9:00 am

Thanks to Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, English Test cricket has been revolutionised – at the expense of the gentle, contemplative game

The crushing defeat of Australia’s divisive Voice referendum

15 October 2023 1:37 am

Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, urged his fellow Australians to take ‘the opportunity to make history’ today. And they did,…

Why did Australia vote No in the Voice referendum?

14 October 2023 9:52 pm

I’m in Sydney for the Voice referendum result and was ready to settle in and watch the declarations for each…

Robyn Davidson explores yet another foreign country – the past

14 October 2023 9:00 am

Now in her seventies, the travel writer returns to her childhood in Australia, and the trauma of losing her mother at the age of 11

Letters

30 September 2023 9:00 am

Australia’s disastrous indigenous voice referendum

23 September 2023 9:00 am

My partner and I have just returned from the most magical trip. As guests of Western Australia’s tourist board we’ve…

Why I’m addicted to Australian MasterChef

16 September 2023 9:00 am

Why is Australian MasterChef so much better than the English version? You’d think, with a population less than a third…

A fable for our times

26 August 2023 9:00 am

When phylloxera destroys the vines on the Aoelian island of ‘S’, the inhabitants, forced to emigrate, blame the recently established prison colony

The problems of being a Bee Gee

10 June 2023 9:00 am

Calling themselves the Bee Gees spelt trouble from the start for the very disparate Gibb brothers, says Craig Brown

Watching Queen Cleopatra felt like witnessing the death of scholarship

20 May 2023 9:00 am

The most controversial aspect of Netflix’s new drama-documentary Queen Cleopatra – not least in Egypt – was the casting of…

Who killed Australia Day?

26 January 2023 6:11 pm

Australia Day was once a big deal Down Under, but in recent years the annual celebration has been somewhat muted.…

Removing PMs hardly ever ends well

14 October 2022 10:38 pm

As Tory MPs appear to descend into a panic of buyers’ remorse over the election of Liz Truss, they would…

How did climate doomsters get the Great Barrier Reef so wrong?

8 August 2022 11:05 pm

We are, of course, in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ and the ‘sixth mass extinction’ of life on Earth.…

Must we now despise colonial architecture too?

6 August 2022 9:00 am

Here’s a thing. A disturbing book about disturbing cities. And it’s full of loaded questions. Like Hezbollah, the publisher uses…

Are the Australian election results a bad sign for the Tories?

24 May 2022 6:49 pm

Scott Morrison’s Liberals were absolutely thrashed in the Australian elections this weekend. The party’s vote collapsed, and there were big-name…

How Scott Morrison was defeated in Australia

22 May 2022 6:00 pm

‘Scott Morrison is empathetic – without the “em”.’ Those words, spoken on Friday by the Labor party frontbencher Jason Clare,…

New Aussie rules: Conservative values have fallen out of fashion

14 May 2022 9:00 am

Conservative values have fallen out of fashion

Could Australia’s answer to Corbyn become PM?

16 April 2022 4:00 pm

While the main electoral attraction of the moment is the French presidential showdown between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen,…

Rest in peace, Shane Warne

5 March 2022 3:16 am

Headingly, July 22nd 1993 and the opening day of the fourth test that summer between England and Australia. This, as…

Novak Djokovic is treating Australians like mugs

7 January 2022 12:27 am

Just minutes from the heart of Victoria’s capital, Melbourne Park is one of the great tennis complexes. For a fortnight…

Why England lost the Ashes

6 January 2022 2:37 am

England’s wretched performance in the Ashes – which saw the side lose three tests and so the series to Australia…

China has begun its campaign to take Taiwan

13 November 2021 9:00 am

Normally, if the response to a speech of mine was that it had been a ‘despicable and insane performance’ from…

How 19th-century gold rushes led to a distrust of China

2 October 2021 9:00 am

For a brief moment three summers ago it seemed that the clear Idaho air wafting through the Sun Valley Literary…