April 2022 Volume Volume LXVI, Number 4, No. 585
The Causes of War
Lessons from an unfinished war
The Fragility-Industrial Complex
Apart from God, Only Trump Can Stop Trump
Putin’s War and the Lessons of History
Anglophobia: The Unrecognised Hatred
Contents
-
In an intriguing article in the latest edition of the […]March 31, 2022
8 mins
-
“A man who starts a war enters a dark room.” […]
March 31, 2022
9 mins
-
The most memorable thing about a recent film I saw was its warning of foul language, of which there was less than one might encounter on a stroll down the High Street. That alert was intended, I surmise, to make us aware of psychological fragility in general and, most important, that we must constantly be on our guard against giving offenceApril 9, 2022
8 mins
-
Electioneering is a blood sport, and it’s blood the US voters are out for. No one watches 'Squid Game' for the victories. Democracy, too, is all about the losers. Nothing beats the satisfaction of stepping into the voting booth, pulling a lever, and whispering to the losing candidate, 'You’re fired'April 6, 2022
8 mins
-
'Putin is not Hitler, Ukraine is not Czechoslovakia, and these are not the 1930s, but there are plenty of disturbing parallels, including a new 'axis' of great powers ready to disturb the peace to get what they want. The Russian dictator and Xi Jinping, issued a declaration on “International Relations Entering a New Era”. We know the type of new era they have in mind'April 3, 2022
13 mins
-
In recent decades, the taboo against hostile discrimination has intensified. […]
March 31, 2022
57 mins
-
It seems as though she has always been there and—though […]
March 31, 2022
9 mins
-
Sir: The letter by Gavin Silbert QC (March 2022) disclaims […]
March 31, 2022
7 mins
-
Some celebrated legacies vanish much quicker than anyone expected. Barely […]March 31, 2022
16 mins
-
When a Russian bomber next enters Irish air space, I sincerely hope it will buzz Dublin at chimney-top height and dislodge the tiles on the Parliament's roof. If Ukraine falls, as fall it probably will, much of the free world will have some responsibility for its fate: but no free country anywhere will have played as abject, as cowardly and as sanctimonious a role as IrelandApril 26, 2022
15 mins
-
Perhaps the only consistent aspect of Australian political life is […]
March 31, 2022
37 mins
-
Notoriously stubborn and abrasive, strongly anti-communist and for a time […]
March 31, 2022
13 mins
-
The ancient cache discovered in Qumran's caves consists of some 981 ancient Jewish religious manuscripts along with many thousands of fragments -- on that all who have been involved over more than seven decades of rivalries, secrecy, subterfuge and bitter theological dispute can agree. Beyond that, the fraught and fiercely contested question of their authorship remainsApril 10, 2022
29 mins
-
Australia has amnesia. When Veronica Gorrie won two book awards […]March 31, 2022
15 mins
-
On April 19 last year, in the crypt of Sydney’s […]
March 31, 2022
14 mins
-
To readers of Quadrant the emergence of Les Murray’s last […]
March 31, 2022
7 mins
-
Amei Li was born in 1950 and belongs to the youngest vintage of victims that can directly recall the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. Her memoir, 'Pink Flower: Growing Up in Mao’s China' is honest and authentic history at its most compelling, and timely too in light of the torments currently being inflicted on the locked-down residents of ShanghaiApril 14, 2022
10 mins
-
Richard Alston's breezily readable 'Donald Trump: The Ultimate Contrarian' gets most things right about the ultimate outsider and his four combative White House years. There's sound counsel, too, for Australia's conservatives: 'Be brave ... believe in yourself and not the polls, make sure you deliver to your target audience'May 3, 2022
5 mins
-
In 1960, around 5 per cent of 18-year-olds attended university; now it is approaching 50 per cent. Such figures are trumpeted by vice-chancellors, but no one pauses to reflect on what such an influx does to the quality of teaching and learning. Without public accountability in regard to this and so many other campus matters, as Salvatore Babones writes in 'Australian Universities: Can They Reform?', the damage can only expandApril 22, 2022
14 mins
-
There has been no shortage of movies about the life and career of the Iron Lady, but 'The Long Walk to Finchley' leads the field. A wonderful, visually gorgeous period piece charting a remarkable young woman's unshakeable faith in herself and her principles, the film is a much-needed counterweight to the many depictions of a loathed and unlamented ice queenApril 18, 2022
15 mins
-
The Great War, the problems of his domestic life and the struggle to establish his literary standing set Eliot to draw on an astonishing range of sources -- classical, biblical, several European literary traditions amongst them -- to portray in a variety of poetic modes Western civilisation on the brink of suicide. This great poem reads more compellingly and urgently today than even in 1922April 12, 2022
17 mins
-
Popular opinion held that the young poet and wastrel 2nd Earl of Rochester kept company with the devil from his teenage years, and his reputation for wildness only grew over what remained of a short and tempestuous life. So devoted was he to vice and strong drink that accounts of a deathbed repentance still conjure the faint taste of a grain of saltNovember 18, 2022
11 mins
-
Thanks to recent discoveries, including a remarkable find in the Fisher Library, the ongoing debate about the number of authentic Giorgiones remains unresolved. What is clear, however, is that his ardent colours and subtle gradations of light conferred a distinctive quality on Venetian art and exerted a lasting influence on European artNovember 20, 2022
21 mins
-
For all her book’s impressive monumentality and thoroughness, Davina Jackson never addresses the question posed by its title, 'Australian Architecture'. Is architecture in Australia genuinely 'Australian' or is, at best, little more than a skilled pastiche of the foreign and familiar executed by imitators who depend on the ideas of others?April 24, 2022
10 mins
-
There had been a tragic earthquake in Sandsville, a hundred […]
March 31, 2022
16 mins
-
Be it a vengeful Gaia poised to fry us all, a black actor's stage-managed bashing at the hands of purported Donald Trump supporters or the notion that one can change sex at will, nothing is too fanciful for the Left to embrace if fellow groupthinkers are doing it too. Whatever the source of such eager gullibility, the result is simply stated: this mob just can’t think straightApril 29, 2022
8 mins
-
The UN’s Consul Administers Hades The Consul smiles agreement and […]
March 31, 2022
1 mins
-
The Escape (after an etching by John Olsen) What […]
March 31, 2022
1 mins
-
-
The Succour Trees In Gethsemane olives were the only […]
October 30, 2017
2 mins
-
Lockdown We live now like Australian reed warblers hiding […]
March 31, 2022
1 mins
-
-
Sacrifice To the Light Horse Regiments and brumbies that […]
March 31, 2022
2 mins
-
Monkey-Skin Pillbox Hat It’s said that an infinite number of […]
March 31, 2022
2 mins
-
The Dawdling Ornithologist When walking in a wild and […]
March 31, 2022
1 mins
-
Corona-Sestina Microscopic spikes to spear unsuspecting cell-walls: the shiny […]
March 31, 2022
2 mins
-
On Reading Continuous Creation I always knew he was […]
March 31, 2022
1 mins
-
Green silence The silence Of this green Tuscan hillside Is […]
March 31, 2022
1 mins
-
The Wimmera Long silences are spent on his tractor, he’s […]
March 31, 2022
1 mins
-
Remembering Philip Martin (1931–2005) What a pleasure that is. No […]
March 31, 2022
1 mins
-
The First of Autumn So freshly now the leaves begin […]
March 31, 2022
1 mins
-
These Astonishments Cosy Corner, southern coast, Western Australia Surmounting […]
December 31, 2017
3 mins
