July - August 2010 Volume LIV, No. 7-8
Lunch in the Garden; Dream
A Meeting of Minds
Eyes Upon Some Inner Thing
Traducing Macaulay
Mediocrity Through the Gates
‘Muddle Tall as Treachery’
Contents
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Lunch in the Garden How still is the life on […]
July 1, 2010
2 mins
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Edmund Burke, by Dennis O’Keeffe; Continuum, 2010, 167 pages, £65.
Continuum’s “Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers” series continues with Dennis O’Keeffe’s excellent volume on Edmund Burke. Clearly, Burke, who insisted that “Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed”, was hardly a libertarian, but he is generally regarded as a major conservative thinker. Thus Robert Grant declared, “In some ways Burke is the greatest of all political thinkers” and ranked him even above Aristotle. Of course, Burke has had his detractors and O’Keeffe examines a number of “cases” against him—yet Burke is acquitted on every count. This book, however, is more than a vindication of Burke; it also offers new interpretation of his significance both as a man and as a thinker. O’Keeffe’s overall conclusion is that Burke is best described as a “Genial Olympian”—praise indeed.
July 1, 2010
10 mins
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Folk Tunes, by Alan Gould; Salt, 2009, 80 pages, $24.95.
Folk Tunes is one of the most enjoyable and intellectually engaging new volumes of verse I have read in recent years. It is Alan Gould’s most accomplished to date. Here we find the poet moving freely between light and serious verse and blurring the line between them, as the light carries the burden of the serious and the serious is relieved of its weight by its very sense of proportion and perspective. Whether serious or light, the poems in this volume are always consummately crafted, suggestive by turns of the structures of Gothic cathedrals on the one hand, and the sturdy yet delicate, perfectly designed skeletons of birds on the other—in both cases, the structures allow the poems to soar and cause the reader to “lift up heart, eyes”.
July 1, 2010
11 mins
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Macaulay: The Tragedy of Power, by Robert E. Sullivan; Harvard University Press, 2010, 624 pages, US$39.95.
Of those works published on Thomas Babington (later Lord) Macaulay (1800–1859), the most notable is the superb 1973 biography by John Leonard Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian, which describes the first half of the life of a highly talented and successful man of letters. In purchasing and then reading this latest biography of Macaulay, written, as it happens, by one of Clive’s students, I was expecting, even hoping, to find a warm, fond account of the Macaulay of the Essays and The History of England, the eminent literary figure of his day and popular historian who cast such a long shadow over his era. Instead, Sullivan’s Macaulay: The Tragedy of Power is a quite different book.
July 1, 2010
10 mins
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The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000, by Chris Wickham; Penguin, 2009, 720 pages, $29.95.
The barbarians who pushed through the gates into the Roman empire were not all bad, but neither were they all good. This is the sober-sided conclusion of this latest attempt at a “definitive” history of what is best known as the “Dark Ages”, the six centuries from the collapse of the Roman empire of the west early in the fifth century AD through to the eleventh century. Wickham says the old “catastrophist” historian’s reading of the “barbarian” conquest began to decline around the end of the Second World War, but he cautions against the excessive revisionism which has shown much romantic light in the dark.
July 1, 2010
9 mins
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Diggers and Greeks: The Australian Campaigns in Greece and Crete, by Maria Hill; UNSW Press, 2010, 496 pages, $59.95.
Anzac Fury: The Bloody Battle of Crete 1941, by Peter Thompson; William Heinemann, 2010, 506 pages, $49.95.
It is always a pleasure to read a well informed, passionately argued case for righting a wrong, such as Maria Hill’s Diggers and Greeks: The Australian Campaigns in Greece and Crete. Dr Hill seeks to show that British, Australian and New Zealand historians have (with some exceptions) denigrated, minimised or simply blotted out the part played by the Greeks and Cretans in the campaigns of 1941. Having explored Greek as well as British and Commonwealth records, she demonstrates the value of the Greek and Cretan contribution to important battles (never shirking negative assessments when called for). The formidable fighting spirit of the people, and of the militia groups and gendarmerie, fills in the picture. Varying from place to place and between senior officers and lower ranks, everywhere dogged by unresponsive allies and by lack of arms, ammunition, food and information, Greek and Cretan troops and civilians filled far more significant roles than emerge from most campaign histories in English. It is fascinating to read Greek and Cretan rebuttals of accusations made by British and Commonwealth critics, and of their disappointment with (what seemed to them) less than wholehearted allies. I would have welcomed more of the Greek perspective.
July 1, 2010
14 mins
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Quite often, in idle moments or upon a sleepless pillow, […]
July 1, 2010
8 mins
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(after Nora Heysen’s portrait, Robert H. Black MD c1950, and […]
July 1, 2010
3 mins
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He steered me towards the artichokes in the market in […]
July 1, 2010
2 mins
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When Dr Keith Bottomley arrived in the ward for his […]
July 1, 2010
7 mins
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My sock-drawer is hosting a Singles Party. My old slippers […]
July 1, 2010
2 mins
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The bride and groom, their mothers, the two bridesmaids, the […]
July 1, 2010
1 mins
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Timber undressed, lightglobes naked riot acts unread heart beating mississippily, […]
July 1, 2010
1 mins
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(Italian: “to soak the biscuit”, i.e. to have sex) Who […]
July 1, 2010
1 mins
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The first Australian celebrity, George Barrington (1755?–1804) harnessed the power […]
July 1, 2010
8 mins
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Shameful Australians SIR: Like Patrick McCauley (June 2010), I am […]
July 1, 2010
18 mins
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I thought the message was loud and clear on the […]
July 1, 2010
37 mins
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Former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr is fond of […]
July 1, 2010
12 mins
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Climate: The Counter Consensus by Robert M. Carter (Stacey International, […]
July 1, 2010
9 mins
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The Hockey Stick Illusion is the shocking story of a […]
July 1, 2010
26 mins
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In 1996, publisher Michael Duffy helped organise for a group […]
July 1, 2010
45 mins
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The collocation of title and subtitle in Cardinal Pell’s latest […]
July 1, 2010
10 mins
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Health is a permanent major political battleground in Australia. In […]
July 1, 2010
22 mins
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The Big Short is Michael Lewis’s incredible retelling of the […]
July 1, 2010
14 mins
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The stage was alive with fun furs, and the play […]
July 1, 2010
11 mins
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Many Australian readers can list several great historians of the […]
July 1, 2010
18 mins
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Throughout the English-speaking world, the educators who control our children’s […]
July 1, 2010
15 mins
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In tribal societies people defended their own through thick and […]
July 1, 2010
14 mins
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Poor Ray Martin clearly has an identity crisis—or rather he […]
July 1, 2010
6 mins
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To ask how media bias will affect the federal election […]
July 1, 2010
28 mins
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It’s funny that even bad smells can tug nostalgic strings: […]
July 1, 2010
15 mins
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Last year I travelled on a cruise from Rome down […]
July 1, 2010
16 mins
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Having passed the phases of decline, decadence and collapse, New […]
July 1, 2010
10 mins
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And this knowledge is extended to our sensibility through suffering […]
July 1, 2010
25 mins
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Michael Scammell is to be congratulated for this magnificent biography. […]
July 1, 2010
18 mins
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Virginia Woolf’s translation into the literary canon was not because […]
July 1, 2010
26 mins
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According to some postings on the internet, which may or […]
July 1, 2010
11 mins
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Hergesheimer, in reverie, discovers Nabokov ailing on a Swiss slope, […]
July 1, 2010
4 mins