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
Ian McEwan does La Cucaracha
A new low in English criticism appeared to have been reached when novels like Middle England, Autumn and A Time of Lies received literary acclaim for the way they caricatured the dull, xenophobic, nostalgia-obsessed, Brexit-voting, provincial masses.[1] Arriving late upon the Brexlit scene, the Booker Prize-winning doyen of modern English letters, Ian McEwan, has nevertheless surpassed them all with his latest novella, an indignant assault upon those who had the temerity to vote Leave and unravel his Eutopian dream. The Cockroach opens with the Prime Minister, Jim Sams, waking to find himself metamorphosed into the eponymous bug. Symbolising the change from “lukewarm” Teresa May to a Johnsonian “die in a ditch” determination, this Kafkaesque transformation galvanises the Prime Minister to implement a bizarre economic policy to fulfil an earlier populist referendum commitment.
The satire assumes that the economic harm Brexit will cause resembles a fantastic scheme to…
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
