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From a perspective of some eighty years it is possible to misunderstand or underestimate the intensity of the fears—but also the hopes and aspirations—of the British people as they faced up to another colossal existential challenge, less than a full generation after what, it was now suddenly clear, had only been the first world war.
Sep 10 2024
11 mins
The Republican presidential contender is an acquired taste. Given the alternative, it's a taste persnickety conservatives should make the effort to acquire
Sep 09 2024
4 mins
Short Takes XVIII
23/5/00 The ghosts that walk beside us
Today a postcard arrived from Les telling how he has met my army cousin, Richard, during a poetry tour of East Anglia and shared an Indian meal with him.
“I was amused to note less of the army manner in him than I see in your good self,” writes Leslie, who hits a mark with this observation, what mark I’m not sure, but a mark nonetheless.
For in career-soldiering lies what has been the most claimant of my alternate selves. I know there is nothing in me that relishes destroying or mutilating other lives, nor taking wanton risks with my own. But to live days where the hours wear crisp edges, where sharp presence of mind and steadiness of nerve are routinely cultivated, where the focus of my allegiance is clear, these things remain attractive to me and in marked contrast to this life-of-imagining I have actually adopted over four decades, where allegiances are vexed, and crisp outlines for the working day and its duties are perversely…
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
