![q](https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/q.png)
1977 and All That
The year begins with Tiny Tim and I wasn’t expecting that. It’s no longer 2023, I’ve fallen into 1977 and I hadn’t meant to. I was finally reading The Saviours by Patrick O’Brien and wondered what Quadrant made of this “intellectual history of the left in Australia” when it was published. The magazine’s huge archives, freely accessible to all subscribers, holds PDF copies of the journal from 1956 to the present. The issues aren’t searchable online.
I start with January 1977 and come face to screen with Tiny Tim, a startling pop art portrait for “The Real Tiny Tim: Fake or Genius?” Huge portrait of a white face, golden flowing hair, Luna Park lips with billboard teeth—pop art by Martin Sharp, so the word Eternity in cursive script flows across the bottom of the image. The article, naturally by Sharp, is encyclopaedic, enthusiastic: “I see Tiny Tim as a human lyrebird.” The editor, Peter Coleman, may have been going through a Martin Sharp phase because…
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