Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word—the men Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages, Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again.                 —Philip Larkin, from “MCMXIV”   In 2014, the BBC announced a four-year schedule of over 2500 hours of commemorative programming, marking […]

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I do not think it at all likely that we shall again have the bad luck to strike a man who combines a blameless record, first-rate linguistic abilities, remarkable gifts as a writer of fiction, and no sense of responsibility in using them!                           —Sir Stewart Menzies, “C” of MI6, 1943 Mrs Wilson is a […]

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    I prefer to think of myself as being inside a tangled knot; tangled knots fascinate me. It’s necessary to recount the tangle of existence, both as it concerns individual lives and the life of generations. Searching to unravel things is useful, but literature is made out of tangles. —Elena Ferrante   My Brilliant […]

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  British writer Jed Mercurio builds television shows the way the Cenobites build puzzle boxes in the Hellraiser movies. Get too close to one, and its intricate mechanism shoots its hooks into you, pulling you through a portal into a gyre of suspense from which there’s no escape. —Mike Hale, New York Times One of […]

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Shooting Beryl Women had been banned from the Australian Rifle Club since 1936. Undaunted, Beryl Drynan Rogers, née Quinn, born 1915,  sights down the buckhorn sight of her pre-World War I Winchester Model 94 carbine, special lever-action repeating rifle, the first to use a smokeless powder round (the Winchester Center Fire).   After the Depression, […]

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Emphysema ended the life of Madeleine St John in 2006 at the age of just sixty four, a dozen years before Bruce Beresford finally found the backing to bring her 'The Women in Black' to the screen. How the reclusive and troubled author might have reacted can only guessed, but there is every chance she would bestowed her approval

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For a dead and apparently lifeless planet, Mars certainly gets more that its share of attention. From HG Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs to Ron Howard and, most recently, Sean Penn, the distant red orb has proven irresistible to any and all with more than an ounce of imagination

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Dr Paul Bauert, an educated man, on Tuesday compared Nauru unfavourably with Auschwitz, a comment so far beyond sanity and couth that he may well have secured forever the crown of Australia's most odious virtue signaller. Joe Dolce wrote in our April, 2018, edition of Maximilian Kolbe and the real death camp. Someone should send Dr Bauert a copy

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The Netflix series Victoria earns top marks for costumes and art direction, and the acting isn't bad either. But as an accurate representation of history, let's just say the dresses are fetching the sets very easy on the eye

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Abbott’s Boobies Papasula abbotti. Endangered seabirds of Christmas Island. White, with black eye patches, wings, tails, marked flanks, blue webbed feet, males have grey bills, females, pink, in face-to-face courtship display, pairs mate for life. Eggs weigh 10% of body weight, incubated under both parents’ feet,   who take turns, in shifts. High risk of extinction, […]

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