Memoir

'Montebello' by Robert Drewe

By Catherine Ford

On the day in 1952 that Britain detonated the first of three atomic bombs off the Pilbara coast, Robert Drewe was in a Perth phone box, begging a late-pass from his mother. He was nine; his mother was anxious. “Atom bombs worry the blazes out of me, and I want you at home,” she ordered. He did as he was told. If only Dorothy Drewe, spunky housewife and mother of three, had been running th

Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard in Retirement

Love thy Leader

By George Megalogenis

A curious feature of our political debate is the way it compels former prime ministers to lose their dignity in the endless feedback loop of the legacy war. The Americans, despite their more openly hostile political culture, treat their ex-leaders with sufficient deference to absolve them of the need for after-the-fact combat. When a memoir is written by a Bush, a Clinton or a Carter, no othe

In conversation with Robert Dessaix

As Robert Was Saying

By Gail Bell

Robert Dessaix refers to the heart attack that almost ended his life in July 2011 as “the emergency”. “I’m not interested in the physical details of what happened,” he says, breaking my gaze to watch the playful nosings of his dog, Polly, on the back terrace of his Hobart home. “If I wrote about it, I might not even give the emergency a name, just as I didn’t when I wrote about AIDS in Night Letters. I didn’t use the wor

Joan Didion’s 'Blue Nights'

When the Centre Cannot Hold

By Inga Clendinnen

Along with many others, I was first drawn to Joan Didion when I read her 1967 essay ‘Slouching towards Bethlehem’. It presented a confession of her own precarious psychological state in intimate counterpoint with an astute analysis of the wider political scene: a combination that would become a Didion trademark. She had written it, she told us, at a time

AIDS 30 Years on

A Quiet Anniversary

By Gail Bell

The taming of HIV/AIDS is Australia’s good news story. Our swift, egalitarian response – the so-called ‘Australian model’ – made us unique in the world and drew plaudits from the United Nations. Central to the success was the willingness of marginali

'Autumn Laing' By Alex Miller

By Janine Burke

The Heide mythos, which has grown from the circle that gathered around arts patrons Sunday and John Reed at their home in Victoria’s Yarra Valley, is a tantalising mix of passion, vision, heartbreak, betrayal and great art. Without the art, Heide would be me

John Bell’s 'On Shakespeare'

Bowing to the Bard

By Louis Nowra

Watching him rehearse was one of the most fascinating experiences I’ve had in the theatre. In 1980 John Bell was playing the protagonist in Cyrano de Bergerac and I was assistant director to Richard Wherrett. Where other actors will show you flashes of their character

A Correspondence with Clive James

Clean As You Go

By Paola Totaro

Unfortunately my health is indecent at the moment. I’m in Addenbrooke’s being seen to but I should be back in London next week and I’ll contact you from there. You can take it for granted, though, that I think [the interview] is a good idea. All be

'Her Father’s Daughter' By Alice Pung

By Brenda Walker

Alice Pung’s first book, Unpolished Gem (2006), was the work of a young, amusing and astute writer. While Her Father’s Daughter again makes use of Pung’s family background (she was born in Australia to ethnically Chinese refugees from Pol Pot’s Cambodia), her fa

'Rave On Buddy Holly'

Maybe Baby

By Robert Forster

Perhaps it could only happen to a white American boy writing songs and recording music during the first decade of rock ’n’ roll and at a time of American economic and cultural supremacy that, at his death on 3 February 1959, at the age of 22 years and 149

Craig Sherborne’s 'The Amateur Science of Love'

Ever Unforgiven

By Drusilla Modjeska

In 2008 Craig Sherborne wrote an essay for the Monthly on the death of his first wife from breast cancer. The title was ‘Unforgiven’. In it, Sherborne tells the story of his years with Alex, whom he met in London in 1985 when he was a callow 22 year old. S

Drusilla Modjeska on Tufi, Papua New Guinea

In the Fjords

By Drusilla Modjeska

Back from Tufi for less than a month, I find myself thinking I should cancel this article, keep the place a secret and let those who think Papua New Guinea is a dangerous place of dark spirits continue in their ignorance. On the first morning of this most recent visit,

Peter Weir’s 'The Way Back' and Leon Ford’s 'Griff the Invisible'

Economies of Scale

By Helen Garner

Epic is one word people resort to when confronted by a tale like the one Peter Weir tackles in his new movie, The Way Back. Seven prisoners escape from a Siberian labour camp in the winter of 1940. They trudge to the Mongolian border, then across a stony desert, through Tibet and over the Himalayas into India, a walk of 4000 miles that takes almost a year.Th

Mark Twain and his Autobiography: Volume 1

Parallel Lives

By Peter Robb

A big book by Mark Twain became a bestseller in the US following its publication last November, a hundred years after its author’s death. It was Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1 (University of California Press, 760pp; $70.00), a handsome book with a wonderful portrait photo of Twain on the jacket. Lovers of Twain’s elastic, laid-back, pungent, humor

Robert Manne on John Howard’s 'Lazarus Rising'

Man of Wood

By Robert Manne

Having wrestled with this long and boring book for six entire days, I was astonished when I finally realised how little I had discovered about John Howard or his government. Apart perhaps for Howard’s version of his testy relationship with Peter Costello, th

Liu Xiaobo

A Nobel Affair

By Linda Jaivin

When I last checked, over 1 million readers had viewed this cryptic message. Among the more than 25,000 comments, the multiple effusions (“Love you!”) and myriad confusions (“Huh?”), was one that quoted from the first volume of Marx and Engels’ Colle

The Blast Zone

By Nicolas Rothwell

Stalker, which was made under the Soviet Union’s studio system in 1979 with limited resources, tells a science fiction tale in stylised fashion. The stalker of the title is a professional guide, who leads two pilgrims into a forbidden “Zone” where the laws of natu

Rock and Roll Babble On

By Robert Forster

To read the New Musical Express (NME) in the ’70s was one of the great joys of the decade. It was an insider’s choice and the seriousness of any new acquaintance’s enthusiasm for music could be instantly gauged by whether they read it or not. The readership of the London-based weekly was predominantly male and in the 15-to-30 age bracket, and many a school project or office job was delayed s