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
Leading Britain
Winston Churchill had no doubt of the importance of studying history: “In history lie all the secrets of statecraft.” This includes its subset, leadership in war. Great war leaders, as Andrew Roberts points out, drawing on the examples of their predecessors, have the ability to make their followers “believe that they are part of a purpose that matters more than even their continued existence on the planet, and that the leader’s spirit is infused into them”.
Leadership in war is morally neutral, and can be used by leaders for either the good of their nations or their destruction. To illustrate this point, Roberts has chosen examples of each type of war leader in this volume, which started life as a series of lectures to the New York Historical Society. In the former camp clearly lie Churchill, George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Charles de Gaulle and Margaret Thatcher. In the latter, lower depths of hell, reside Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Napoleon Bonaparte and…
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
