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Russia’s Yen to Rebuild a House of Cards
The ability to “read the play” is a quality often ascribed to successful politicians, businessmen and sportsmen. The term refers to the ability to predict events and then to take an advantageous position in expectation of the prediction coming to fruition. In the sporting arena it is best seen in champion tennis players like Lew Hoad whose anticipation allowed him simply to “materialise behind an opponent’s ball” (as my brother Peter once neatly put it), and modern Aboriginal footballers with their uncanny foreknowledge of the way an oblong ball is about to bounce.
I was thinking about reading the play (or if you like, prescience) recently when reading the wonderful memoir Last Boat to Astrakhan by Robert Haupt (left), an Australian writer and traveller who he died at the age of 49 just before this book was published and who spent five years in Russia between 1990 and 1996. Towards the end of this time, he took a boat trip down the Volga River from Moscow to the…
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