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
Fearless in Love and Life
One Leg Over
by Robin Dalton
Text, 2017, 197 pages, $33
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Robin Dalton, literary agent and film producer, is best known for her first memoir, Aunts Up the Cross, which begins, “My great Aunt Juliet was knocked over and killed by a bus when she was eighty-five.” That slim book, originally published under Dalton’s maiden name Robin Eakin, has always been a favourite with Australian readers.
Now aged ninety-six, Dalton has produced a snappily titled sequel, One Leg Over. The back cover blurb quotes from page 11:
During the five months’ duration (weekends only) of my marriage I did not even learn what an orgasm was. Neither did I learn this from the American servicemen with whom I exultingly tripped though the first years of our Pacific War. It took the British Navy, or second wave of wartime visiting servicemen, to teach me this.
Despite this burst of frankness, Dalton archly claims in the afterword that the title refers to the struggle to heave an ageing…
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
