Arts and culture
When did publishers stop caring what their readers actually want?
It was easy to choose books for my young nieces and nephews this Christmas. First, I ruled out stories about…
The mad cult of Doctor Who
When Doctor Who returned to wild acclaim in 2005, after 16 years off-air and about a generation of being regarded…
Ed Sheeran’s time is up
Who’s the worst pop star of modern times? Some might say that Adele sounds like a moose with PMT –…
Eye-batting nonchalance
What is it about the Egyptians that bewitches us? Ramses and the Gold of the Pharoahs opened at the Australian…
Tracey Emin and the problem with museum trustees
The Royal Academy has nominated Tracey Emin to be a trustee of the British Museum. There is quite a fanfare…
The brilliance of A.S. Byatt lives on in her writing
Dame Antonia Byatt, the novelist A.S. Byatt, has died after a long illness. With her goes part of the conscience…
People of extraordinary glamour
A refreshing and humbling prospect, in a world where we sometimes imagine cultural coverage gets better, is to revisit the…
In defence of The Crown
Since 2016, we have cultivated a new national pastime: moaning about the latest series of The Crown. Every time Netflix’s…
Rip-roaring satire in Iota
This novel is the ninth book of the satirical series concerning Grafton Everest, a rambunctious, overweight, fictional academic who, as…
Character acting without the character
Miss Saigon may on the face of it seem like an odd choice of musical for Opera Australia to revive…
How the girls sighed
You know the year is starting to come to an end when a new production of A Christmas Carol is…
A naive friend
John le Carré was one of the more extraordinary popular writers of the last half-century (and more) and part of…
Lost in Translation was Tokyo at its bizarre, dislocating best
You can wait ages for a Japan themed Hollywood film and then three come at once. In an odd spasm…
Astonishing mistress of song & dance
The Newsreader has already caught a lot of attention for the way in which it weaves together a strong sense…
This earth-shattering work
What a strange thing popular culture is. Back in the 1970s a lot of people might have affected to despise…
That extraordinary mutant masterpiece
It’s been a long time coming, Patricia Cornelius’ My Sister Jill but she’s a playwright whose work demands to be…
His brilliant boggling career
It’s interesting to see that Mel Gibson, no less, is in the blood and violence TV streamer The Continental which…
By hook or by crook
Anne Henderson has produced a series of important books on the Menzies era. Her latest volume adds to this considerable…
Diamond-bright hoot
Oh to be in London with Barrie Kosky calling the shots in the first part of Wagner’s Ring Cycle Das…
Mermaid out of her depth
It’s strange the different strands of culture we constantly negotiate. The Rolling Stones bring out a new album and this…
Poets don’t stink
The Australian Book Review poetry prize is upon us again and it’s worth mentioning that the ABR editor Peter Rose,…
The terribleness of a progressive Bond
The latest Bond villain is Nigel Farage. Not literally, of course. But he was clearly a major inspiration for the…
Everybody’s friend
It was cheering in its way to hear, from the lips of that shrewd urbane man Tony Burke, that 246…
A woke witch hunt has taken over the arts
Remove the preconceptions that stop you seeing clearly, and it is hard to tell the difference between how the arts…
The masterful technique
Isn’t it weird to hear reports of eminent curators at the British Museum leaving because various priceless artworks (often of…
