In This Issue
July 2005 in brief
Robert Manne in "Murdoch's War": how a lovestruck teenager, an angry young man and an ambitious press baron made sure bad news was no news...
More ...The Nation Reviewed
Comment
Malcolm Knox
On May 11, 1989, the worst team to leave Australia was playing the Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s. One of the worst team’s worst bowlers...
More ...The Nation Reviewed
Street Talk
John Harms
On the cover of the first Australian edition of Vice, a free street magazine published about once a month, a bloodied rat lay dead on a...
More ...The Nation Reviewed
Board Shorts on Sunday
Celina Riberio
Rebecca Smith, 16, broke curfew. She knew she was going to be late and she knew her mother, Janelle, would be sitting at home waiting. She...
More ...The Nation Reviewed
The Doc, The Vet, The Matrons
John Birmingham
Brendan Nelson, John Howard’s education minister, did a funny thing a while back. Funny strange, that is, not funny ha-ha. He apologised to...
More ...The Nation Reviewed
Curse of the Dimdims
Drusilla Modjeska
Ten days after the incident at Brisbane airport, we were in a Port Moresby hotel watching Sunday morning current affairs from Australia. It...
More ...The Monthly Essays
Murdoch's War: How a lovestruck teenager, an angry man and an ambitious baron made sure bad news was no news on the path to Iraq
Robert Manne
Four months later on January 17, 2003, the Hobart Mercury was singing the standard Murdoch tune:History is littered with the victims of...
More ...The Monthly Essays
Fields of Dreams: The battle for the Timor Sea, home of oil, gas, hot air and hope
Tony Clifton
There are plenty of reasons. One is that only six years ago Indonesian troops were looting, burning and murdering their former subjects...
More ...The Monthly Essays
From BoHo to PoHo: Plaques and decay. Can Kings Cross survive a $30 million facelift?
Linda Jaivin
There’s something inescapably romantic about the idea of the Cross, that dirty half mile of Darlinghurst Road plus the suburbs of Potts...
More ...Story
The Intervention
Nicholas Shakespeare
W. made his slow way up the steps into Am Sandwerder and accustomed his eyes to the light, uncertain whether the streaks in the sky...
More ...Television
"There Are No Limits, Love": Graham Kennedy was an eyes-popping perfectionist, a subversive pre-feminist, a rebel without any trousers on.
Kerryn Goldsworthy
Among the many thousands of words written in the days after Graham Kennedy died, one memory recurred like a refrain: Kennedy’s uncanny gift...
More ...Books
A Sort of Homecoming. Familiar strands in an unfamiliar land: 'The Grave at Thu Le' by Catherine Cole
Drusilla Modjeska
Considering the significance of Vietnam in Australia’s post-colonial sense of itself, it is curious that it hasn’t made its way to...
More ...Books
Renegade at the Lecturn: Australia's national philosopher: John Anderson
Clive James
There is a tone of voice you can hear in the way a sentence is balanced, even if you are not equipped to understand its content. “What the...
More ...Film
Fragments of a Swooping Mind. Raw tissue, ragged editing: Jonathan Caouette's 'Tarnation'
Helen Garner
The first person to appear on screen in Jonathan Caouette’s documentary, Tarnation, is a mad-looking middle-aged woman with thick dark hair...
More ...Fashion
Twist & Whisper: Perth shyboy Richard Nicol has come a long way from green polyester flares
Katie Cohen
The first time I met Richard Nicoll he was in a Sydney cocktail lounge, looking rather hangdog about a recently broken love affair. The...
More ...Books, Noted
'Mao: The Unknown Story' by Jung Chang & Jon Halliday
Gideon Haigh
In a 1970 interview with a favoured apologist, Mao Tse-Tung described himself in Chinese as literally “a man without law or limit”. This...
More ...Books, Noted
'Road Story' by Julienne Van Loon
Tony Wilson
“Diana Kooper is running.” This is the first sentence of Julienne Van Loon’s evocative debut novel, and it takes only a page or two of...
More ...The Monthly Essays, Art, Noted
'Albrecht Dürer: Master of the Renaissance' NGV International
Justin Clemens
If the gap between PR claim and reality is notoriously vast, this is one promo that tells it like it is: the National Gallery of Victoria...
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