![norton mug](https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/norton-mug.png)
Read All About Them
“Never trust a Sydney newspaper proprietor,” Sir Keith Murdoch told his son Rupert, who was in time to become one himself. The Sydney press lords were once a famously weird mob—and whether they remain so is an open question.
The Packer dynasty; the odd couple of stately, unworldly Warwick Fairfax and his polar opposite R.A.G. (“Rags”) Henderson; and further back the neurotic and bullying Ezra Norton, son of Napoleon admirer John Norton, founder of the “awful” Truth, Australia’s most memorable scandal sheet. Their doings and frailties and those of the senior Murdoch dominate Sally Young’s lively and often fascinating Paper Emperors. Young is a Professor of Political Science at Melbourne University.
This review appears in the latest Quadrant.
Click here to subscribe
The Melbourne proprietors in times past were outwardly nearer the average Australian, but part of interlocking business groups who kept each other comfortable in a way that would horrify modern…
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