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
War in the Shadows
Director Jean-Paul Salomé has said that he got the idea for his new film Female Agents (original title Les Femmes de l’Ombre—Women in the Shadows) in 2004 when he read the Times obituary of April 24 for Lise Villameur, who had died aged ninety-eight. From 1942 to 1945 as Lise de Baissac she had been the only female agent to run her own network in occupied France for the British Special Operations Executive.
It is easy to see why Salomé found her story so fascinating. De Baissac had been a formidable agent who had played a major part in sabotaging German transport after D-Day. Also, judging from the official photographs, she was very beautiful, with a striking resemblance to Michele Morgan, one of the great French film stars of the period. It was an ideal part for the extraordinary Sophie Marceau, who at forty-one is about the same age as de Baissac was when she was operating as an agent in 1944—and Marceau is equally if not more attractive….
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
