Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
Read for Your Life
Books celebrating the value of reading are quite common. Recent additions to the genre include Alexander McCall Smith’s What W.H. Auden Can Do for You (2013) and Clive James’s Latest Readings (2015). Michael McGirr’s Books That Saved My Life casts a wider net into deeper waters than either of these worthy books and he consequently lands a wondrous catch. McGirr focuses on forty writers—each gets a brief chapter—who provided him with lessons in a rich humanity and a more authentic life. He knows that everyone has a story to share, but great writers have the rare talent to tell their stories in a memorable way. The books he celebrates are diverse, ranging from monastic memoirs to modernist novels.
Michael McGirr was in the Jesuit order for twenty-one years before leaving the order, getting married, and beginning a career as a teacher. He teaches at St Kevin’s College in Melbourne. It is clearly a job he loves. Several chapters include instances when a poem or scene…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
