Room for Fetishes
Redmond O’Hanlon and Rudi Rotthier, The Fetish Room: The Education of a Naturalist (Profile Books, …
Quadrant Magazine
Modern Opera’s Literary Success Story
When Opera Australia mounted Andre Previn’s operatic version of the classic Tennessee Williams play A …
The African Obamas
Peter Firstbrook, The Obamas: The Untold Story of an African Family (Arrow, 2010), 338 pages, …
Manning Clark and the Nazis
Coming to Terms with the "German Experiment" "But my emotional sympathies are with them in this …
The Eternal Search
Inez Baranay, With the Tiger (Arcadia/Press On, 2010), 304 pages, $24.95 If the Somerset Maugham classic …
Two Views of Captain Bligh
Jennifer Gall, In Bligh’s Hand: Surviving the Mutiny on the Bounty, National Library of Australia, …
Artistic Secrets
Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is that rarest of all cinematic forms, a film noir about …
What Poetry Is Really About
Andrew Lansdown, Allsorts: Poetry Tricks and Treats (Wombat Books, 2011), 278 pages, $24.95 Andrew Lansdown, many …
How Culture Wars Threaten Ethics and Religion
Shimon Cowen, Politics and Universal Ethics (Connor Court, 2011), 120 pages, $22.95 Reading this set of …
Don’t Truckle With Treason
Nicholas Hasluck, Dismissal, Fourth Estate, 2011, 359 pages, $29.99 Some issues in Australian public life are …
Inside the Afghan War
Toby Harnden, Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain’s War …
There You Come Home
One of Australia’s great artistic treasures, James McAuley’s poem “Because” is only a slight thing …
Truth and Travesty
Is the Oscar-winning movie The King’s Speech an insight into a little-known episode in the …
So Much Is Not Enough
James D. Wolfensohn, A Global Life (Macmillan, 2010). Jim Wolfensohn started life in a modest Jewish …
Ancient Origins of the Anglosphere
Robin Fleming, Britain after Rome: The Fall and Rise, 490 to 1070 (Penguin, 2011), 458 …
Hardy Plant, Tolerates Danger
Michael Wilding, The Magic of It (Arcadia/Press On, 2011), $24.95 Michael Wilding’s latest fiction, his eighteenth, …
Big Characters in Small Spaces
Kingsley Amis, Complete Stories, Penguin Classics, 2011, 528 pages, $49.95 Kingsley Amis was a keen mimic. …
Every Arrow in the Quiver
Peter Coghill Rockclimber’s Hands (Picaro Press, 2010), 58 pages, $15. A North Dakotan, I’m 1200 miles …
MONA’s Brutal Banality
Although we don’t know it, this will be the day of the Christchurch earthquake. For …
The Delusions of Modern Progressives
Roger Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope, Atlantic Books, 2010, …