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
The Most Wonderful Thing
Madeleine: A Life of Madeleine St John
by Helen Trinca
Text, 2013, 280 pages, $32.99
Madeleine St John was “pickled in love” as a small child, but her life was marred by unresolved grief. She died alone in a London hospital at the age of sixty-four, just a few years after one of her novels was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
It all began so well. The elder daughter of Sydney barrister Edward (Ted) St John and his French wife Sylvette Carghier, Madeleine was a war baby, born in Sydney in 1941 while her father was serving with the AIF in Palestine. Ted St John was raised in hardship in the large family of a Church of England canon, acquiring a strong sense of duty and a puritanical streak. Sylvette’s parents, originally Romanian Jews, spent many years in Paris before migrating to Sydney. Madeleine’s sister Colette was born in late 1944. For a time the young family lived in cramped but fashionable quarters at Merioola, the Edgecliff mansion where most tenants were artists, dancers…
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
