Australian Books
Cods wallop
One might hope that as a Hellene, Niki Savva could shed some light on the tragedy of the Abbott government…
Three writers
This ‘documentary’ of the lives and careers of Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall presents a detailed account,…
Hat trick
Kipling once wrote a poem lamenting that the three-volume romantic novel (‘The old three-decker’) was said to be extinct. It…
Kerr’s curse
Here it is, yet another book on the Dismissal. The fall of Gough Whitlam in 1975 has created quite a…
Child’s play
In Australia there are tens of thousands of emotionally stable, financially secure but medically infertile people. As much as they…
Fighting back
For anyone looking for a stimulating read this summer, one that bestows a certain sense of rationality on our otherwise…
The year in books
In an age of white noise Christopher Pyne’s A Letter to My Children (MUP, $33) stands out as a loving…
Saints and demons
‘The Australian Labor Party is composed of two main factions,’ writes novelist Shane Maloney, ‘Them and Us’. This truth illuminates…
Unsung hero
Between the defeat of the government of Digby Denham in 1915 and the election of Campbell Newman in 2012, Queensland…
Aussie royals
If the issue of Australia becoming a republic is a marathon rather than a sprint, the republicans never had a…
Telling it on the mountain
As we stood on the threshold of the dacha outside Vladivostok, the Australian delegation paused. We had been monitoring Boris…
Pollie peddling
When Christopher Pyne’s A Letter to My Children was launched, a bunch of radical students mounted a violent demonstration. The…
Salad days
If you enjoy reading Greg Sheridan’s Diaries in this magazine, you’ll love this book. The author, a 30-year veteran journalist…
For your own good
I grew up queer in Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland. Bjelke-Petersen was populist, racist, and religious: he hated socialism, but the Queensland of…
Steyin’ alive
What are the odds that one of the world’s best political commentators happens to be an expert on the songs…
The first Clive Palmer
When former Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard, was finishing off his autobiography Lazarus Rising in 2010 I asked him whether…
Winning the Cold War, losing the culture wars
On the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe day, many Eastern Europeans boycotted celebrations in Moscow, marking the day with…
Crank Case
Paul Heywood-Smith QC has written a weak case for Palestine. A much stronger book was there to be written, but…
Local hero
Some of us habitually quote Orwell’s correct comparison of producing first-person prose to ‘dosing yourself with some … very deleterious…
War and jealousy
Le Hamel was the site of an extraordinary triumph of allied arms early on the morning of July 4, 1918.…
In the bunker
Wars make myths; probably no-one understood that better than Charles Bean, Australia’s first true war writer and a person who…
In the bunker
Wars make myths; probably no-one understood that better than Charles Bean, Australia’s first true war writer and a person who…
Ends of the earth
This story, second in a projected series (the first was The Thief Fleet, reviewed in these pages 8 December 2012),…
Tales to tell
The short story has long been a staple of Australian literature but has had something of a rough ride in…
Buffoonery
Not so much striding across the political landscape as huffing and puffing his way through the back rooms, Clive Palmer…
