"Bob finally noticed that Ernie had fallen asleep. His chin was on his chest, his heavy bottom lip drooping. As the background babble of the lecture ended, the old man gave a start, slowly opened his eyes, and looked up. He wasn’t smiling"

The pauses in Sandy's monologues were worthy of Beckett. Critics acclaimed  a ‘darkness reminiscent of Philip Larkin’,  ‘Ezra Pound with the lights out’ and a pervading ‘Checkovian melancholy’. Barry more prosaically described Sandy as the voice of a different and vanishing Melbourne 'talking in its sleep'

Sometimes it takes an outsider to tell you the truth you already know about yourself, but just can’t admit. As a foreigner, a friend, and a Philistine, I’m here to tell Australians that the indigenous Voice on which you will soon vote is a dud. It is an anti-democratic mechanism for authoritarian governance that will set a precedent for other forms of liberal authoritarianism to follow

As Nigel Biggar points out in Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, the trouble with 'the anti-colonialists’ equating Britain with slavery and demanding 'cultural decolonisation’ is that it requires amnesia about everything that has happened since 1787. High on the list of things they ignore is that the crusade for the abolition of slavery was very popular in Britain from the late eighteenth century onwards

Contrary to the promotional ads, Insight's big question, 'Has political correctness gone too far?' was not addressed. Nothing was said, for instance, about the cancelling of Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer and Israel Folau, nor was there discussion of the wokesters' campaigns to revoke civil honours awarded to Margaret Court and Bettina Arndt. What viewers did get was a fine lesson in the modern Left's talent and appetite for bullying

Despite bitterly cold October weather, the revered 82-year-old took to the road and set off, Lear-like, intent on once more visiting the Optina Pustyn Monastery and then heading to the Caucasus to live in peasant's hut. This so distressed daughter Sophia she flung herself into a pond in the throes of despair. her misgivings were prescient. Falling ill on a train, he was taken to a stationmaster’s cabin, where in due course he passed away in the railwayman’s iron-framed bed

Xi Jinping would like nothing better than for trans-Atlantic bonds to be loosened and for France—and the rest of Europe—to be more independent from the US. Meanwhile, Beijing has no intention of allowing Europe (or the European Union) to end up independent from the PRC. The question we have to ask is whether Macron ,speaks for all of Europe

That US academics such as John Mearsheimer, along with some Australian political commentators, cannot accept what actually happened in Kyiv's Maidan Revolution in 2014 is a tribute to the power of Russian campaigns of deception. It is also a reflection of their misunderstanding -- or to be less charitable, their ignorance -- of the intricacies of Ukrainian politics and society since independence

Asked to be a part of a documentary exploring their working relationship and its much-lauded fruits, celebrated biographer Robert Caro and his editor of 50 years, Robert Gottlieb, both initially said no, believing 'the work between a writer and an editor is too private for anyone else to see'. That each eventually relented is something to be celebrated, as the resulting film is a fascinating delight

I suggested that perhaps rail could take some of the pressure off road transport, but this didn't go down well with the driver of our 18-wheel Titanosaur, who was busy instilling terror left and right of the double lines. 'Bloody trains, they’re worse than women drivers at blocking the roads,' he sneered. Reinserting his false teeth, dislodged in his vehemence along with a dribble of Wild Turkey, he related how his drivers knew to treat trains with same contempt they display for all other road users

The Left and most of the Australian mainstream are ignorant of or refuse to acknowledge the harmful features of traditional Aboriginal culture. Many think of the pre-contact continent as a virtual Eden where all lived in peace and harmony before being destroyed by rapacious white colonists. The truth, radically different from the treaty-mandated exercise in propaganda called 'truth telling', is otherwise -- and yet this is what is being taught to children

King Charles' coronation, which went off with none of the feared hitches, protests or other unpleasantness, is the textbook example of an ancient monarchy surviving as a living, breathing being, not some dead and purely ceremonial thing rolled out for the odd occasion. Power from below, authority from above -- amid all the pomp and pageantry, that was both the message and the lesson

The idea that the abolition of cash will put an end to tax evasion and trafficking is a strange manifestation of the belief that man is perfectible. The collection of banknotes featuring a rogues' gallery of dictators, tyrants, mad mullahs and mass murderers that graces my kitchen's breakfast nook suggests this is the most forlorn of hopes

That Aborigines began arriving 65,000 years ago is still unproven, much contested, and largely beside the point. Whatever the arrival date, it is surely immaterial compared to the vast age of this great land to which we all now belong. How can the Uluru Statement claim sovereignty in perpetuity when all of us, indigenous and otherwise, have only been on this continent for a minor part of its existence?

Along with many accounts of memorable Irish characters, such as Archbishop Daniel Mannix and others, James Franklin's Catholic Thought and Catholic Action outlines the extraordinary evolution of lay societies designed to create a complete Catholic cul­ture covering most aspects of life. This is a book dedicated to exploring and preserving communal Catholic memories

New-style disinformation requires little in the way of evidence. You don’t have to show the origins of fake reports, as was the case when exposing Soviet mischief, or how they are linked to the crime. No, you infer the crime itself from the fact that something undesirable has happened. After that you confidently attribute it to someone or some thing you don't like and which can be portrayed as benefitting

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