Diary Australia
Diary
It’s not often you have a foretaste of paradise. Recently I spent a month in Europe — the UK, Ireland,…
Diary
Some years ago, on a flight from Adelaide to Sydney, while putting my hand luggage in the overhead compartment, I…
Diary
A lamentable by-product of the media in the digital age is its frequent lack of good manners. Ridiculing opponents rather…
Diary
I’ve recently rediscovered the lost, forbidden pleasure of the smoko. My earliest memories of enjoying a smoko were back at…
Diary
A rabbi, a Catholic priest and an Anglican minister all gathered for afternoon tea. No, it’s not the start of…
Diary
I don’t normally put a great deal of thought into my tweets. Chatting idly on Twitter one night I had…
German Diary
The Greeks may fear and loathe Frankfurt as a crass citadel of German capitalism. Not me. It’s Germany’s aviation and…
Diary
Here’s a piece of news you may have missed. The EU has shelved its trade talks with India. At the…
Diary
My wife and the mother of our six children, Lucia, is from an Italian family and two of our disagreements…
Diary
The Governor-General hosted an informal BBQ dinner for parliamentarians and their partners at Yarralumla the night before the first day…
Diary
I watch yet another ugly Schapelle Corby scene on the television news: she’s being released from prison and bundled into…
Diary
Here in Patterson Lakes — Melbourne’s Mecca for cashed-up tradies and tattooed ladies — Tony Abbott has an image problem.…
Davos Diary
‘Shaping a better world’, the theme for this year’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, was nothing if not…
New Zealand Diary
Someone spilled duty-free liquor by the baggage carousel. I am flying and then bang: I land at Auckland airport. My…
Mother country diary
Being a wife has privileges. They’re called in-laws. And it was within that spousal remit that I recently headed to…
Diary
Tony Abbott became the seventh Australian Prime Minister to select a PM’s XI to play against a major touring team,…
Notes from a gap year
When taking a gap year, it is meant to be just that. A year. Alas, I’m into my second year…
Diary
‘A bunch of Y-front wearing pansies’ is how one of my conservative friends describes the Abbott government. It’s an interesting…
Diary
As Australia faces a new year of fiscal restraint, sobering economic news and reduced circumstances, it’s interesting to reflect on…
Diary
The editor rings in a sweat. Tony Abbott was to have written this diary but dashed off to South Africa…
Notes from a Media tart
One of the drawbacks of writing for a magazine as esteemed as the Spectator Australia is that you are assumed…
Diary
One of the joys of travelling to outposts of the Anglosphere is that it’s often much more British than Britain.…
Diary
I flew from London into Sydney, then Melbourne, to make three dinner speeches in a row. Through nerves I never…
Notes from abroad
When someone ten years your junior asks you to drop your pants you know it’s going to be an interesting…
Conrad Black’s diary: Sydney, Murdoch, Paxman and other stories
What a pleasure it was to be back in Sydney this month after an absence of 14 years. That city…
