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A Blast from the Past
In the jubilee year of 2000, a veteran Australian journalist in Rome, Gerardo Tobino, comes across a down-at-heel but imperious figure who is passed off under the name of Daniele Allegri, The Diviner Comedy being his latest. Tobino recognises him as a reincarnation of Dante Alighieri, who died 700 years ago, and whose biography he has yearned to write.
Desmond O’Grady is now over ninety, a writer who left Melbourne in his twenties over sixty years ago. He married and remained in Rome, becoming the author of over a dozen books. In addition, he is a widely syndicated journalist, with his reporting on Italian and Vatican affairs, up to the recent Pell imbroglio, published in many of the world’s newspapers, including Australian ones. His saturation in Italy’s culture and its religious past is evident everywhere in this novel and in his journalism. His photo graced the front cover of Quadrant’s edition of February 1971, which included one of his short stories. O’Grady is…
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