‘A Legacy of Spies’ brings together two of John le Carré’s greatest characters – but why?
Smiley’s return
John le Carré is one of the more remarkable writers alive today, not least because he’s been in his time a supreme entertainer. And that is, by necessity, a point at which roads...
Chatto & Windus; $29.99
‘The Gustav Sonata’ by Rose Tremain
Every so often, a novel comes along that not only confounds your sense of the author but creates a sense of wonder at what the form can achieve. Rose Tremain’s The Gustav Sonata...
‘The Legacy’ by Kirsten Tranter
Kirsten Tranter, the daughter of famous poet John and formidable literary agent Lyn, has a literary background with bells on. Her first novel, The Legacy, shows her to be a...
Hilary Mantel’s ‘Wolf Hall’
Tudor Style
It must be an abyss to contemplate the historical novel set in Tudor times. It’s not so much that the job has been done with such splendour in days gone by: Ford Madox Ford’s The...
Best Books for Summer 2008–09
Alice Schroeder, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (Bloomsbury, 976pp; $49.95).
Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father, read by the author (Text Publishing, 6...
Peter Craven on the best books for Summer
A stockingful
I suppose 2008 will be remembered as the year when the bottom fell out of the markets and America elected Barack Obama. If the former is likely to send most readers screaming back...
Opera in Australia
Sing out loud, sing out strong
It’s an odd business, a night at the opera. You know, if you like the diversion, that you are basking in the glow of an artistic institution that we're lucky to have and yet...
Peter Craven's Best Books for Summer 2007-08
Julian Burnside, Watching Brief: Reflections on Human Rights, Law and Justice (Scribe, 320pp; $32.95). ISBN(13): 9781921215490.Julia Fox, Jane Boleyn: The Infamous Lady Rochford (...
The best books for summer
Sixty of the best
Christmas is one of those times when the world gives books, almost as if a nostalgia for filling the mind with images suggested by words has as deep a pull on our unconscious mind...
An interview with Geoffrey Rush
As you like it
It's a long time now since theatre-goers in this country first became aware that Geoffrey Rush was a major actor. There was the spidery intensity of his role in Diary of a Madman...
The best books for summer
A thinking read
It's always an odd business to work out the vagaries of what anyone might like to read over Christmas and the New Year. Even the gender lines get tricky: not all fiction is simply...
An interview with Robert Hughes
Time’s arrow
In the '70s, when Robert Hughes recapitulated and refined his ideas about Australian art in an ABC TV series, the brio and drama he brought to it were as dazzling as any Brett...
Has the Australian film industry lost its way?
Cut!
It’s the first night of the Steve Sewell play It Just Stopped and all the faces from Australian film and television are on show, almost as if it’s a rollcall. It Just Stopped is...
MJ Hyland’s ‘Carry Me Down’
Truth, lies, madness
Maria Hyland came to prominence a couple of years ago with How the Light Gets In, the mesmerising story of a Bad Girl who is always proving herself more right than her betters....
